Highlights from May 1, 2025
- President Donald Trump said he will nominate national security adviser Mike Waltz to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be his interim national security adviser.
- Sources told NBC News earlier in the day that Waltz, who has been on shaky ground with Trump after he inadvertently added a journalist to a private chat on the messaging app Signal with other top national security officials to discuss military strikes in Yemen, was expected to leave his position in the administration.
- A Trump-appointed judge rejected the administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans it alleges are members of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua.
Coverage of this live blog has ended. For the latest news, click here.
Musk, DOGE soften tone on fed workers while alleging fraud at agencies
Elon Musk and his DOGE staff softened their tone regarding federal workers while repeating government fraud claims in a Fox News interview held during DOGE's weekly 10 p.m. meeting at a White House office building.
Asked which agency has put up the biggest resistance to DOGE's efforts, one staffer claimed the United States Institute of Peace had "loaded guns" inside before alleging the agency had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban and its chief accountant deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from several years in what Musk called a "cover up."
NBC News reached out to the USIP for comment.
“It’s certainly illegal to delete accounting records that they that Congress would certainly want to know where the congressionally appropriated funds are going from taxpayers," a DOGE staffer said, adding DOGE referred evidence to the FBI and DOJ.
After months of criticism over dehumanizing the federal workforce, Musk and his DOGE colleagues expressed gratitude for "all the government employees who are helping reduce the waste and fraud"
"I’m not trying to sort of say, well, government employees are bad. That’s absolutely not the case," Musk said.
"We are encountering troves of government employees who are missionaries, not mercenaries, who are actually here serving because they believe in what they’re doing," added a DOGE staffer identified as "Donald P."
"Agency by agency, it is filled with exceptional government employees, right?" he said. "When we give them the tools, when we give them the systems, and we leave behind systems to help them do their jobs better, that’s the permanent change, right?"
DOGE's Joe Gebbia announced that for the first time, 25 government retirees are going through an entirely online retirement process. 80,000 federal workers have so far accepted deferred resignation offers, according to DOGE official Anthony Armstrong.
Rubio says Russia and Ukraine remain 'far apart' on a peace deal
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News' Sean Hannity that Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on an agreement to end their war, even as Trump said this week that he believes the "confines of a deal" had been agreed to.
“I think we know where Ukraine is, and we know where Russia is right now, where Putin is. They’re still far apart. They’re closer, but they’re still far apart," Rubio said. "It’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the president is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this.”
Rubio said in April that if the countries do not reach an agreement to end the war "in the short term," the United States is prepared to "move on."
Rubio made Thursday's remark while discussing his new role as interim national security adviser, temporarily replacing Mike Waltz, whom Trump asked to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, instead.
The comments are a departure for Trump, who days ago called on Russia and Ukraine to hold ceasefire talks "at very high levels" to finish off an agreement, asserting that "most of the major points are agreed to."
Trump questions whether undocumented immigrants have a right to due process
In his commencement address at the University of Alabama tonight, Trump questioned whether undocumented immigrants are owed due process, criticizing recent judicial rulings that have called on the administration to afford the protections to the people it's seeking to remove.
"The courts are trying to stop me from doing the job that I was elected to do," Trump said. "Judges are interfering, supposedly based on due process. But how can you give due process to people who came into our country illegally? They want to give them due process. I don't know."
A federal appeals court cited due process concerns when it declined to block an order directing the Trump administration to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native deported back to the Central American country in March.
Trump asserted in an interview with ABC News this week that there is "a different standard" of due process for people who enter the country illegally, though he later conceded the country needs to be "careful" in how it carries out deportations.
Trump touts efforts to bar trans women from playing in women's sports in commencement address
After he praised the University of Alabama's women's track and field team for winning two Southeastern Conference titles this year, Trump turned his commencement address at the school political, touting his administration's effort to bar transgender women from competing in women's sports.
"As long as I’m president, we will always protect women’s sports. Men will not play in women’s sports," Trump said to loud applause.
Trump made transgender women and sports a core component of his presidential campaign, and he has used the levers of the presidency to try to fulfill his pledge to keep sports separated by biological sex.
He signed an executive order in February directing his administration to "rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities."
"It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth," his order read.
Trump suggested in at the commencement address that his executive action on the topic was far more popular than polling suggests.
"They say that’s an 80-20 issue. No, it’s a 97-3 issue. I think now men will not be playing in women’s sports," he said.
China says it’s evaluating U.S. overtures to initiate talks on trade
China is assessing the situation after U.S. officials reached out “through relevant parties multiple times” to seek tariff negotiations, a spokesperson for the Commerce Ministry said in a statement.
In the statement, Chinese authorities reiterated Beijing’s request for the United States to “correct its wrongdoings” by removing all unilateral tariffs. Failure to do so would indicate “a lack of sincerity” from Washington and “further compromise mutual trust,” they said, according to a CNBC translation.
Judge temporarily blocks further Trump administration efforts to shutter library services agency
A federal judge today blocked the Trump administration, via the Department of Government Efficiency, from taking further action to dismantle the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services following a lawsuit by the American Library Association.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon wrote that the Trump administration most likely violated the law by putting about 75 staff members on administrative leave, firing the board and terminating grants to libraries and museums across the country. Leon also said the lawsuit has a substantial likelihood of success.
“The wholesale termination of grants and services and the mass layoffs appear to violate the clear statutory mandates outlined” in the Museum and Library Services Act, Leon wrote. “Moreover, defendants’ conduct contravenes Congress’s appropriation of almost $300 million to IMLS. Plaintiffs are therefore likely to succeed in showing that defendants’ actions to unilaterally shutter IMLS violate, at minimum, the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The judge found that the public interest “in preserving crucial access to library services” outweighed the administration's argument that complying with Trump's executive order to shutter the agency was in the public interest.
Leon issued a narrower temporary restraining order than the one the plaintiffs had requested, which orders the defendants not to place any other employees on administrative leave, not to terminate the employment of any staff and not to further pause, cancel or terminate grants or contracts.
Cindy Hohl, president of the American Library Association, praised the ruling.
“The immediate halt to the gutting of IMLS is a win for America’s libraries and the millions of Americans who rely on them,” Hohl said in a statement. “ALA is encouraged that the court recognizes the immediacy of the need for IMLS and library services at risk.”
Growing GOP fight over ‘SALT’ tax deduction complicates Trump agenda bill
Republicans are at loggerheads over the fate of a controversial tax deduction that is critical to winning enough votes in the House to pass Trump’s legislative agenda.
After a week of meetings and discussions, Republicans still haven’t settled on how to handle the state and local tax deduction, also known as “SALT,” which allows filers to deduct up to $10,000 in taxes paid to state and local governments. Before the House adjourned for the week today, GOP lawmakers on opposite ends of the spectrum continued to snipe over whether to raise that $10,000 maximum imposed by the 2017 Trump tax cuts.
Pro-SALT Republicans insist it’s not enough to lift the cap to $15,000 for individuals and $30,000 for married couples. Party leaders are looking at a higher cap, killing the “marriage penalty” and potentially an income threshold to limit the deduction to the middle class, according to lawmakers and sources with knowledge of the talks.
There is no consensus in the GOP’s narrow House majority. It is a sensitive topic after several Republicans in high-tax areas lost their re-election races in 2018 after they backed the 2017 tax law that imposed the $10,000 cap. A new crop of GOP lawmakers has since won re-election by promising to raise that cap, but doing so would be expensive, and it would complicate the rest of the bill, which also seeks to boost funding for immigration enforcement and the military, as well as raise the debt limit.
JD Vance says Mike Waltz has Trump's 'trust'
Vance heaped praise on former national security adviser Mike Waltz, who Trump announced today will instead be nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
"He’s got the trust of both me and the president, but we also thought that he’d make a better U.N. ambassador as we get beyond this stage of the reforms that we’ve made to the National Security Council," Vance said in an interview with Fox News' Brett Baier. "Donald Trump has fired a lot of people. He doesn't give them Senate-confirmed appointments afterwards."
Waltz was removed from his post weeks after he was embroiled in controversy for mistakenly adding a journalist to a Signal chat alongside several Trump officials, including Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which details about an impending military strike were shared.
Vance heavily disputed the notion that Waltz's reassignment stemmed from the Signal chat mishap.
"If the president wanted to fire him over the Signal thing, which, by the way, was a total nothing-burger of a story," Vance said. "He actually decided it’s better for Mike to be in this new role."
Vance said that, if anything, the Signal leak portrayed him, Waltz and Hegseth in a positive light.
"I thought it reflected well on me, I’m obviously biased about myself, but about Mike Waltz [and] Pete Hegseth, that we were deliberating how to implement the president’s agenda. I think that’s what a good national security team should do."
Appeals court denies Trump's effort to grant DOGE access to sensitive Social Security data
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted to deny the Trump administration's request for it to lift restrictions barring DOGE from accessing sensitive data housed in the Social Security Administration.
The vote was 9-6.
The appeals court ruling, filed yesterday, preserves U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander's decision to stop "DOGE affiliates" from accessing the personal and private data of millions of people, including their Social Security numbers, medical records and tax information.
Hollander's opinion, the appeals court wrote, “emphasizes that all this highly sensitive personal information has long been handed over to SSA by the American people with every reason to believe that the information would be fiercely protected."
The appeals court said the government has not proven that DOGE requires access to its sensitive information to complete its work.
"The evidentiary record establishes no need for such access; rather, the evidence demonstrates that DOGE’s work could be accomplished largely with anonymized and redacted data, along with discrete pieces of non-anonymized data in limited, appropriate circumstances — as has long been typical at SSA for the type of technology upgrades and waste, abuse, and fraud detection that DOGE claims to be doing," the court wrote.
Former Trump NSA John Bolton not surprised by Waltz ouster
Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton told "Meet the Press NOW" it was "only a matter of time" before Waltz was removed from his old job.
"I think most people in Washington believe that it was only a matter of time before Mike Waltz moved on, probably outside the administration," Bolton said, adding Waltz's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations was "more surprising."
"I’m surprised that they’ve nominated him for a job that would require Senate confirmation, because you can guarantee that the confirmation hearing will be dominated by the Signal chat group issue," Bolton said, adding that he thought Waltz did "a fine job" as national security adviser.
Bolton was former President George W. Bush's U.N. ambassador.
"I wish him well, but it’s not going to be fun going through confirmation," Bolton said.
Bolton parted ways with Trump during his first term after having served about a year and a half in the post. Bolton said he resigned, and Trump said he forced him to do so, which Bolton denied. Bolton said today that what happened to Waltz should be a warning to others thinking about joining the administration.
"I think Mike Waltz’s experience should tell anybody in the private sector or any, any other position outside the federal government if you’ve got a secure job, think long and hard about abandoning it to go and serve in the Trump administration," he said.
