White House claims ‘more than 1 million’ federal workers responded to Doge’s ultimatum email – live | Republicans
‘More than 1 million’ federal workers have responded to Doge’s ‘what did you do last week’ email, White House claims
Asked when is the deadline referred to in Elon Musk’s deadline second email to federal workers, Leavitt says agency heads will “determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies”.
“The secretaries are responsible for their specific workforce, and this is true of the hirings and the firings that have taken place,” she says.
She adds that unless their agency has told them not to, workers should reply to the email.
She claims more than a million workers have so far responded, including herself.
It took me about a minute and a half to think of five things I did last week. I do five things in about ten minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working.
Key events
Trump was due to sign more executive orders at 3pm ET but he’s running behind, we’ll bring you more on the orders as we get it.
Judge gives Trump administration Wednesday night deadline to pay foreign aid funds
This report is from Reuters.
A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Trump administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients by 11.59pm on Wednesday night, saying there was no sign that it had taken any steps to comply with his earlier order that the funds be unfrozen.
US district judge Amir Ali’s order came in a telephone hearing in a lawsuit brought by organizations that contract with and receive aid from the US Agency for International Development and the State Department. It applies to work done before 13 February, when the judge issued his earlier temporary restraining order.
It was the third time Ali had ordered the administration officials to release foreign aid funds that were frozen after Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid, throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit have said they will have to shut down completely if they are not paid soon. They allege that the administration has violated federal law and the US constitution in refusing to pay out the funds and in dismantling USAid.
The foreign aid agency on Sunday said that all of its staff except certain essential workers would be put on paid administrative leave, and that 1,600 positions in the US would be eliminated.
You can read more about USAid and what the freeze means for millions of people around the world here:
Judge extends block on Trump administration’s freeze on federal funding
This report is from Reuters.
A US judge on Tuesday extended an order blocking the Trump administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding by pausing grants, loans and other financial support.
US district judge Loren AliKhan in Washington wrote that while some funds had become unfrozen since she first temporarily blocked the administration’s spending pause, there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding.
The judge said for those reasons she agreed with groups representing nonprofits and small business that a preliminary injunction was necessary blocking a further funding freeze.
“The injunctive relief that defendants fought so hard to deny is the only thing in this case holding potentially catastrophic harm at bay,” she wrote.
Those groups sued after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on 27 January issued a memo directing federal agencies to temporarily pause spending on federal financial assistance programs.
That memo said the freeze was necessary while the administration reviewed grants and loans to ensure they are aligned with Trump’s executive orders, including ones ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and directing a pause on spending on projects seeking to combat climate change.
OMB later withdrew that memo after it became the subject of two lawsuits, one before AliKhan and another before a judge in Rhode Island by Democratic state attorneys general. But the plaintiffs argued the memo’s withdrawal did not mean the end of the policy itself.
They pointed to a social media post on X by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shortly after the memo was withdrawn saying: “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”
Federal judge in Seattle blocks Trump’s effort to halt the refugee admissions system
This report is from the Associated Press.
A federal judge in Seattle has blocked Donald Trump’s effort to halt the nation’s refugee admissions system.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by major refugee aid groups, who argued that Trump’s executive order suspending the federal refugee resettlement program ran afoul of the system Congress created for moving refugees into the US.
Lawyers for the administration argued that Trump’s order was well within his authority to deny entry to foreigners whose admission to the US “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States”.
US district judge Jamal Whitehead said in his ruling after the hearing on Tuesday that the president’s actions amounted to an “effective nullification of congressional will” in setting up the nation’s refugee admissions program.
“The president has substantial discretion … to suspend refugee admissions,” Whitehead told the parties. “But that authority is not limitless.”
Justice Department lawyer August Flentje indicated to the judge that the government would consider whether to file an emergency appeal.
The plaintiffs include the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and individual refugees and family members. They said their ability to provide critical services to refugees – including those already in the US – has been severely inhibited by Trump’s order.
Some refugees who had been approved to come to the US had their travel canceled on short notice, and families who have waited years to reunite have had to remain apart, the lawsuit said.
Peter Baker of the New York Times has compared the White House’s decision to take control of the press pool covering the president and its banning the Associated Press from key White House spaces to treatment of the press under the Kremlin. He wrote on X:
Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.
The message is clear. Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it does not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories.
Every president of both parties going back generations subscribed to the principle that a president doesn’t pick the press corps that is allowed in the room to ask him questions. Trump has just declared that he will.
Important to note, though: None of this will stop professional news outlets from covering this president in the same full, fair, tough and unflinching way that we always have. Government efforts to punish disfavored organizations will not stop independent journalism.
Lauren Gambino
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed “not one” Democratic vote on the Republican budget proposal that could come to the floor as early as this evening.
Jeffries declared from the steps of the US Capitol, surrounded by Democratic lawmakers and advocates:
Let me be clear, House Democrats will not provide a single vote to this reckless Republican budget. Not one, not one, not one.
The press conference was intended to be a show of protest against the Republican bill – the legislative vehicle for enacting Trump’s tax cut and immigration agenda. The minority leader is under pressure to stand up to the Republican majority. Activists have keyed in on the possible cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans.
Jeffries said:
The Republican budget represents the largest Medicaid cut in American history.
Children will be devastated. Families will be devastated. People with disabilities will be devastated. Seniors will be devastated. Hospitals will be devastated, nursing homes will be devastated.
In an earlier press conference on Tuesday, House Republicans accused Democrats of “defending and even advocating for government waste, fraud and abuse”.
Lauren Gambino
At a rally on Capitol Hill, progressives lawmakers and activists railed against Republicans’ plan to enact Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut and immigration agenda. A vote could take place as early as this evening, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Opposition to the House budget resolution has been steadily building over the last few weeks. During last week’s recess, constituent anger over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs as well as Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle the federal government boiled over at town halls and Congressional offices across the country.
At the Capitol Hill protest, called Tax the Greedy Billionaires and headlined by MoveOn and Indivisible, Senator Chris Murphy assailed the Republican budget bill as the “most massive transfer of wealth and resources from poor people and the middle class to the billionaires and corporations in the history of this country”.
He continued:
You’re talking about $880 billion of cuts to Medicaid. And I get it like $880 billion like, what does that mean? Right? That’s a huge number. Nobody understands. Let me tell you what that means. That means that sick kids die in this country. That means that hospitals in depressed communities and rural communities close their doors, right? That means that drug and addiction treatment centers disappear all across this country.
Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the Progressive Caucus, compared the moment to the early days of Trump’s first term, when Congressional Republicans, newly in the majority, attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The effort prompted a widespread backlash and ultimately failed in the Senate, with a dramatic thumbs-down vote by the Arizona Republican John McCain.
“The American people won and those House Republicans lost,” Casar said. “We’re right back in the same situation, because today, something is happening in America. Americans are rising up to say, ‘We want a government by and for the people, not by and for the billionaires.’”
More on opposition to the Trump administration here:
Asked why Dan Bongino was named deputy director of the FBI rather than a current special agent, as is normal practice, Leavitt claims Bongino got the job because he understands the depth of “past corruption” at the agency.
The press briefing is over now.
Leavitt is also asked what Trump meant when he said federal workers who don’t respond to Doge’s ultimatum email would be fired or “semi-fired”.
She doesn’t clarify things.
She’s also asked again who is the Doge administrator. She repeats what she said earlier: Elon Musk is overseeing Doge, and there are “career officials and political appointees” at Doge.
She says she won’t reveal the name of the individual at this briefing but would be happy to follow up and provide it to the reporter, generously adding: “We’ve been incredibly transparent about the way Doge is working.”
Leavitt is asked about Republican concerns about how (Doge’s) cuts are being carried out, citing Richard McCormick, a Representative from Georgia, who fears “it’s too rapid for people to adapt to” and worries that it’s coming off as “discompassionate”.
Leavitt says McCormick is just one Senator (he’s actually a Representative) and says the most important people are the American people, who support Doge’s efforts to tackle “waste, abuse and fraud”.
Leavitt rejects that cabinet secretaries including at the FBI and DoJ were “caught off-guard” by Doge’s ultimatum email.
She claims “anonymous sources, probably career bureaucrats, have leaked that to many of you in this room”. She adds:
Everybody is working as one team and the president respects the decisions of his cabinet secretaries to tell their staff not to respond to that email because they did so out of interest of national security, and they didn’t want to risk confidential information.
Elon Musk will attend Trump’s first cabinet meeting on Wednesday
Leavitt says the Tesla CEO will be attending the president’s first cabinet meeting tomorrow.
He will be “talking about all of Doge’s efforts and how all of the cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud and abuse at their respective agencies”.
Leavitt is asked if Trump is planning on whipping any votes for support for the House budget vote and if so to whom is he making calls.
She says Trump “has made it clear to the Hill what his priorities for a budget are”. She says he has told the Speaker [Mike Johnson], [Senate] leader [John] Thune, adding the Senate and the House know what Trump wants “and what the American people want”.
“He expects Congress to get it done,” she adds. “He’s looking at the proposal from the House, and he will also be looking at the proposal, I believe, the Senate is drafting up as well.”
Asked who is the “Doge administrator” referenced in Trump’s executive order which created the group, Leavitt says the president tasked Elon Musk with overseeing the Doge effort, adding that there are “career officials and political appointees” helping run Doge.
She brushes off a follow-up question asking if that means Elon Musk is the administrator.
Leavitt says there is no update on negotiations on a Ukraine minerals deal and when Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the US.
Leavitt is asked about Elon Musk’s reasoning that the emails were sent out to confirm whether the workers were actually alive. She is also asked about NBC’s report that the responses are going to go into an AI generator to evaluate whether their jobs are necessary. Is all of this to see if people are actually working or is it an effort to cut some of those jobs?
Leavitt says she hasn’t seen NBC News’s report and she hasn’t heard that from Doge or Musk.
‘More than 1 million’ federal workers have responded to Doge’s ‘what did you do last week’ email, White House claims
Asked when is the deadline referred to in Elon Musk’s deadline second email to federal workers, Leavitt says agency heads will “determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies”.
“The secretaries are responsible for their specific workforce, and this is true of the hirings and the firings that have taken place,” she says.
She adds that unless their agency has told them not to, workers should reply to the email.
She claims more than a million workers have so far responded, including herself.
It took me about a minute and a half to think of five things I did last week. I do five things in about ten minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working.
Asked about Elon Musk’s second email to federal workers threatening that they will be fired if they don’t respond, Leavitt says Trump asked for Musk to be “more aggressive” and five bullet points isn’t a great ask.
She says the president defers to his cabinet secretaries to “pursue the guidance relative to their respective workforce”.
She claims Trump, Musk and the entire cabinet are working as one team.
