The Office of Personnel Management is housed inside a concrete and glass federal building three blocks west of White House. The agency’s name conjures images of dull and ordinary backend government work, but it’s arguably the most powerful human resources department in America. It holds detailed records on 2.1 million federal workers and millions more Americans who have applied for those jobs. It also has the email address for nearly every federal employee. As President Trump and Elon Musk have waged war on the federal service and congressionally mandated spending over the last two weeks, much of those efforts have revolved around Musk and his allies harnessing government data in unprecedented, and perhaps legally questionable, ways. The executive suites on the fifth floor of OPM’s Washington headquarters are at the center of that effort. For career officials at the OPM, the alarm bells started going off during transition meetings with incoming Trump officials. Such meetings usually involve handing off details from the outgoing administration about the status of major projects, the nuts and bolts of the organization’s structure, and how to onboard new hires. But Trump’s team was unusually fixated on OPM’s computer systems, says a current OPM official. During those early meetings, Greg Hogan, who has since been installed as OPM’s new chief information officer, spent a lot of time asking about the computer systems, how they are accessed, what the security measures are in place and how security patches get installed. “My spidey sense was going off,” says the OPM official, who has been involved in briefing previous Presidential transition teams during changes of administrations. “The questions were all about IT.” Federal workers came to quickly understand how much OPM was changing on Jan. 28, when most of them received an email from a new government-wide email system originating from within the agency. It offered them eight months’ pay in exchange for their resignation. (Shortly after those emails went out, employees at agencies like USDA and NOAA said their email accounts were inundated with spam.) The buyout offer is currently in limbo, after a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked it in response to a lawsuit by labor unions. The blanket call for resignations was only the most visible way in which the new administration is harnessing OPM’s resources to advance Trump’s agenda. In the last two weeks, administration officials have moved to install Trump appointees into crucial technical jobs at OPM, many of which Congress intended to be filled by career officials whose work spans administrations of both parties. Musk allies are working to change that in virtually every agency, and they are using OPM’s role as the central hub for the government’s hiring practices to do it. This week, Trump’s political appointees ousted OPM’s chief financial officer Erica Roach, a career official who was in charge of managing $1 trillion in deposits held by the Earned Benefits Trust Funds that include the retirement accounts and health benefit funds for most of the federal workforce. After Roach was informed she had been demoted she chose to resign, according to a current OPM official. The White House and OPM did not return requests for comment. A few days before, the agency’s top technology officer, Melvin Brown, was reassigned to a different office, allowing Hogan, a Trump ally, to fill a position that normally goes to career civil servants. Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, intends for that switch to become a pattern across the federal government. On Tuesday, a little-noticed memo sent by Ezell to every cabinet department and agency jumpstarted what could be a radical change in how the federal government hires its top tech officers, also known as chief information officers or CIOs. Currently, the CIOs at most agencies are considered “career reserved” positions, meaning those roles can only be filled from the existing ranks of the federal government senior executive service. Multiple administrations have followed that hiring practice for CIOs, judging that they are fitting the definition in current law that states a position is designated career reserved “if the filling of the position by a career appointee is necessary to ensure impartiality, or the public’s confidence in the impartiality, of the Government.” But Trump’s new leadership at OPM is arguing that chief information officers in those roles shouldn’t be limited to career government officials because the decisions made by CIOs impact policy. “A modern agency CIO is not a mere engineer, scientist or technocrat,” Ezell wrote in his memo. “He does not spend his days writing complex lines of code, setting up secure networks, or performing other ‘highly technical’ tasks. Instead, he crafts and effectuates policy, and sets and deploys his budget, based on his Administration’s priorities.” Ezell gave agencies until Feb. 14 to request OPM strip the career federal service requirement from the CIO role. This administrative change would pave the way for political appointees running Trump’s agencies to recruit candidates from outside the career federal service for those positions. Putting hand-picked candidates in those crucial IT roles across the government will give DOGE and the Trump White House more centralized access to massive troves of data about the federal workforce and government spending. That’s by design. But it has raised concerns that the administration will ignore typical safeguards in place to prioritize employee privacy and protect against foreign intelligence hacking. OPM’s senior leadership has been overtaken with Musk allies, including senior advisor Brian Bjelde, who recently worked for Musk’s SpaceX as vice president of human resources; chief of staff Amanda Scales, who had previously worked for Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI; and senior adviser Anthony Armstrong, who worked as a banker on Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter. Another person who has been instrumental in pushing through the new actions is Andrew Kloster, OPM’s new general counsel, who worked in the White House during Trump’s first term and was recently former congressman Matt Gaetz’s general counsel. Some senior career officials at OPM have already been locked out of key databases. There is concern that political appointees have access to systems, including the Enterprise Human Resources Integration, without standard safeguard procedures designed to keep information private. That system includes information like pay grades, length of service, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and home addresses. On Friday, Jan. 31, Bjelde told career supervisors at the Office of Personnel Management that the “target” was to cut 70% of the agency’s staff, a move that a current OPM official predicted would hobble the teams responsible for overseeing health care benefits and retirement-planning for the federal workforce.

When Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race in July and endorsed Kamala Harris for President, Jotaka Eaddy was at her childhood home down a dirt road in Johnsonville, S.C., getting ready to host her regular online gathering of Black women leaders. The weekly Sunday video conference quickly ballooned from its usual several hundred attendees to more than 90,000, and the network’s hashtag #WinWithBlackWomen radiated across the Internet, sparking nearly 200 more groups to form under monikers like Cat Ladies for Kamala, Train Lovers for Harris, and Swifties for Kamala. The call raised $1.6 million in 100 minutes for Harris’ campaign. Two months later, as Eaddy sat in the front row at a campaign event hosted by Oprah Winfrey and featuring appearances by celebrities like Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, and Chris Rock, Harris turned to her and said, “Jotaka started it.” Eaddy launched Win With Black Women in 2020 to counter racist and sexist attacks against Black women being considered to join Biden’s ticket as Vice President. The group mobilized a get-out-the-vote effort for Biden and Harris, and when they won, the group pushed for Black women to be named to senior positions. They demanded the Senate hold a swift vote to confirm Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. And they pressured the Biden Administration to bring home WNBA All-Star Brittney Griner from captivity in Russia. “When we as Black women show our economic power, our political power, it sends a message to the country about our rightful place in this country, but also about the investments in Black women,” says Eaddy. “How do we close these gaps? How do we harness the collective power of Black women so that we collectively rise?” As a strategy consultant and former tech executive, Eaddy has worked with Silicon Valley companies to measure the social impact of technology and close racial gaps in access to online lending and startup financing. Black women, she says, receive less than 1% of venture-capital tech funding. She previously worked as senior director for voting rights at the NAACP and also advocated around the U.S. in the early 2000s to end the juvenile death penalty, helping to lay the groundwork for the Supreme Court in 2005 to ban the practice that disproportionately ended the lives of Black and Latino youth. Eaddy’s social-justice work started early. She caught the attention of her community in rural South Carolina with her Easter speeches in church. In high school, she was invited to Washington, D.C., to attend a law conference, and friends held bake sales and community dinners to raise $3,000 for her to go. She went on to become the first Black woman elected student-body president in the history of the University of South Carolina. Harris’ loss to Trump initially left her feeling defeated until a longtime mentor told her, “No one’s dropped the baton. We simply had the honor of carrying it further.” While Harris didn’t win the election, Eaddy says, “we did not lose the collective forward movement of Black women.” She now lives in the nation’s capital, but she has been spending time in Johnsonville recently to help her father after her mother died in December. On the wall of her childhood bedroom, her mom had put up a painted sign reading “All you need is love.” Eaddy says her parents taught her to have love for herself, love for people, “but most importantly love for our collective freedom.” Styling by Jasmine Pittman; hair by Maureen Rumble; make-up by Lola Okanlawon

T his article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Perhaps the clearest distillation of President Donald Trump’s sprawling first address to the new Congress came Tuesday night when he laid the premise for making cuts to Social Security, a program he cast as ripe with fraudulent payments to zombies. It was as disingenuous as it might prove persuasive to those Americans who are cheering for Trump’s race through Washington, torching all he touches. “Over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old,” Trump asserted. He then added there are 1,041 people over the age of 220. The claims have been thoroughly debunked, with even his own Social Security chief explaining it is a misreading of an ancient federal database, one that could cost $9 million to update, and none of those “people” were getting monthly checks. But facts were not the point in the speech. This was a night entirely about feelings, and many of Trump’s promises sounded good to his ear with him at the center of the circus. Car loans’ interest payments to become tax deductible, but only made-in-America vehicles? Sounds good, until you realize auto production supply chains make that designation almost impossible. A citizenship-for-sale scheme for super-rich foreigners? That’s not something a President can do unilaterally. Automatic death penalties for those convicted of murdering law enforcement? His existing executive order only instructs the Justice Department to pursue them, but Congress and the courts are going to have something to say about such instant sentencing. If everything about this feels overwhelming, that is because it is, and by design. For the last six weeks, Americans have been yanked and ghosted, lurched and launched with a merciless urgency. “Swift and unrelenting action” is how Trump pumped up his record. It was one of the rare completely unspun statements of the evening. If the cruelty was the point of the first Trump term, then the chaos is the thesis of the second. As TIME’s Eric Cortellessa reported going into the evening, Trump’s team was more interested in staging moments to go viral than presenting an operating argument for actually governing. He did not leave the Capitol empty handed. There were plenty of headlines, made-for-TV moments, and memes that partisans of all stripes can exploit. So much of Washington has been spiraling since Trump returned to town. Every day seems to bring new developments, reversals, and initiatives, each more brazen than the last. Democrats in Congress have watched with confusion, fear, and outrage as Trump has taken steps that have canned tens of thousands of federal workers, shut down offices that feed the world’s poor and track weather systems, and upended decades of international norms. Nothing has been beyond Trump’s boorish reach, not even a Kennedy Center musical about a shark who befriends would-be prey or, briefly, the building that houses the American Red Cross. So as Trump stood under the klieg lights of Congress on Tuesday night and before millions of Americans, he took the next logical step toward a more disunified national agenda. With his pronouncements, Trump made pledges to purge and criminalize revenge porn, expand foster care programs, and pursue debunked theories about autism. He returned to a missile defense shield for the U.S., right after informing one student he was heading to West Point and a child with brain cancer he had just been made an honorary Secret Service agent. He suggested the United States had succeeded in reclaiming the Panama Canal, hinted that Greenland would become part of the United States “one way or another,” and would relaunch shipbuilding as a major domestic industry. It was impossible to keep track of what was practical and what was purely political messaging, which is entirely how Trump has been lashing D.C. since Jan. 20. It has left everyone just doing their best to keep up. When Rep. Al Green of Texas, a Democratic lawmaker who is often a step afield from his party, stood in protest of Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him removed by the security staff. Democrats stayed in their seats holding signs declaring “Musk Steals,” their minor attempt at expressing disapproval of Elon Musk’s rampage through government. Within the first half hour of a record-breaking 100-minute speech, Democratic lawmakers began to stream out of the chamber in disgust with Trump’s constant blaming of former President Joe Biden for all that came before. Toward the end, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts clapped in defiance when Trump singled her out as “Pocahantas.” All the while, Republicans stood and cheered on command, including one of the biggest eruptions for Musk. With very few exceptions, Trump’s party has allowed him to ditch career professionals that run the mundane, day-to-day cogs of government. Few objected when he remade maps and sought naked retribution against any who refused to call it The Gulf of America. Even as the stock market took a pounding as Trump’s trade war rippled from Wall Street to Main Street to farm fields, none dared to confront Trump over his ill-informed plan to levy tariffs on some of America’s most reliable and deep-pocketed economic partners. The answer, per guidance from GOP House Leadership, was just to stop holding town halls where lawmakers could face a grilling from rightly angry constituents who were promised a more orderly Trump 2.0. Trump rightly expected no serious threat to his hold over Washington. While senior GOP Senators had deep reservations bordering on hostility toward some of Trump’s Cabinet picks, he ultimately lost only one. (That was disgraced former House Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew before his paperwork was even sent to the Senate.) Trump barrelled his way into his first Cabinet meeting—complete with Musk in a baseball cap and T-shirt—on Feb. 26 and then into the House Chamber a week later. (On Tuesday, Musk wore a suit.) As one very smart insider observed to me last week, a whole lot of bad choices made by many Americans with varying degrees of real or imagined power led to this moment. Once a power is abdicated, it seldom comes back easily or with as much strength as before. For Republican lawmakers, the atrophy has been as severe as it has been rapid. So as Trump arrived at the Capitol, his GOP friends had little choice but to fall in line in a speech that was more rallying cry than policy proposals. When he called “Joe Biden the worst President in American history,” his party went along with it. When he devoted time in his first joint address to this Congress to boast about his electoral win last year, he got plenty of cover from his base in the room. The cheers continued for his denigrating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that he ended. And when he complained he wasn’t getting sufficiently praised, there were sympathetic cheers. “These people, sitting right here, will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it, no matter what,” Trump said. Everyone knew the script even if no one bothered to read it. That’s not to say there aren’t reasons for Trump’s circle to be worried. The trade war is objectively bad politics; in the last two days, the tariff tiff erased the entire gains Wall Street posted since Trump won in November. The undefined goals of the tit-for-tat escalation with some of the United States’ most important partners has left markets reeling and businesses baffled as to how this ends. It was, put plainly, a huge risk with really poor odds for an American win. It drew the most tepid reaction from Republicans of the evening, even if Trump was not taking the hint. “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly. There may be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much,” Trump promised, downplaying the risk that has investors freaking out. All the while, the deep cuts to government are starting to become more clear to voters. His feud with Ukrainian leaders was out of step with the hawks in the GOP, and huge portions of the American public. The culture-war spat over transgender rights, “wokeness,” and English as a national language does zero to offset the economic devastation of his unpredictable trade efforts. And there is a sense that his grievance-driven agenda is starting to feel like the grind of a reality show that goes a few seasons too long. None of this seemed to rattle Trump, who treated the evening as an opportunity to rewrite the history to his liking, one in which he alone has power in Washington. "We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in 4 years or 8 years. And we are just getting started,” Trump said. He may well be correct. More than 400 executive actions are on the books and he is closing in on 100 executive orders. But much of it may not track with what Trump is selling. The details are not the point. The chaotic flurry of activity is. And Trump is completely aware that he is Washington’s pacecar.

President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, his first such speech of his second term. He faced hecklers and Democratic protests as he discussed his agenda, touted his accomplishments, defended his foreign policy dealings, and demeaned his opponents. The following transcript was prepared and provided to TIME by Rev, using AI-powered software, and it was reviewed and edited for accuracy by TIME staff. Speaker Johnson, Vice President Vance, the First Lady of the United States, members of the United States Congress—thank you very much. And to my fellow citizens: America is back. [Republicans chant: USA! USA!] Six weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this Capitol and proclaimed the dawn of the “Golden Age of America.” From that moment on, it has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country. We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years—or eight years, and we are just getting started. Thank you. I return to this chamber tonight to report that America’s momentum is back. Our spirit is back, our pride is back, our confidence is back, and the American dream is surging bigger and better than ever before. The American dream is unstoppable, and our country is on the verge of a comeback, the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again. There’s never been anything like it. The presidential election of November 5th was a mandate, like has not been seen in many decades. We won all seven swing states, giving us an electoral college victory of 312 votes. We won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country— —and won counties in our country, 2,700 to 525, on a map that reads almost completely red for Republican. Now for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction than the wrong direction. In fact, it’s an astonishing record, 27 point swing—the most ever. Likewise, small business optimism saw its single largest one month gain ever recorded: a 41-point jump. [House Speaker Mike Johnson interjects to call out Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who has repeatedly interrupted Trump’s speech. Green is escorted out afterwards.] Over the past six weeks, I have signed nearly 100 Executive Orders and taken more than 400 executive actions—a record to restore common sense, safety, optimism and wealth all across our wonderful land. The people elected me to do the job, and I’m doing it. In fact, it has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency—it’s our presidency—is the most successful in the history of our nation. By many. And what makes it even more impressive is that, do you know who number two is? George Washington. How about that? How about it? I don’t know about that list, but we’ll take it. Within hours of taking the oath of office, I declared a national emergency on our southern border, and I deployed the U.S. military and border patrol to repel the invasion of our country. And what a job they’ve done. As a result, illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded—ever. They heard my words and they chose not to come. Much easier that way, in comparison under Joe Biden, the worst President in American history, there were hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month. And virtually all of them, including murderers, drug dealers, gang members and people from mental institutions and insane asylums, were released into our country. Who would want to do that? This is my fifth such speech to Congress, and once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease—a disease that would wipe out entire nations—or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded. And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it no matter what. Five—five times I’ve been up here, it’s very sad, and it just shouldn’t be this way. So Democrats sitting before me, for just this one night, why not join us in celebrating so many incredible wins for America, for the good of our nation, let’s work together and let’s truly make America great again. Every day, my administration is fighting to deliver the change America needs to bring a future that America deserves, and we’re doing it. This is a time for big dreams and bold action. Upon taking office, I imposed an immediate freeze on all federal hiring, a freeze on all new federal regulations and a freeze on all foreign aid. I terminated the ridiculous Green New Scam. I withdrew from the unfair Paris Climate Accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars that other countries were not paying. I withdrew from the corrupt World Health Organization, and I also withdrew from the anti-American U.N. Human Rights Council. We ended all of Biden’s environmental restrictions that were making our country far less safe and totally unaffordable. And importantly, we ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction. To unshackle our economy, I have directed that for every one new regulation, 10 old regulations must be eliminated, just like I did in my very successful first day. And in that first term, we set records on ending unnecessary rules and regulations like no other President had done before. We ordered all federal workers to return to the office—they will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job. And we have ended weaponized government, where, as an example, a sitting President is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent—like me. How did that work out? Not too good. Not too good. And I have stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back. And two days ago, I signed an order making English the official language of the United States of America. I renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” And likewise, I renamed—for a great President, William McKinley, Mount McKinley again. Beautiful Alaska, we love Alaska. We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military. And our country will be woke no longer. We believe that, whether you are a doctor, an accountant, a lawyer or an air traffic controller, you should be hired and promoted based on skill and competence—not race or gender. Very important. You should be hired based on merit, and the Supreme Court, in a brave and very powerful decision, has allowed us to do so. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We have removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools. And I signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female. I also signed an Executive Order to ban men from playing in women’s sports. Three years ago, Payton McNabb was an all-star high school athlete, one of the best, preparing for a future in college sports. But when her girls volleyball match was invaded by a male, he smashed the ball so hard in Payton’s face, causing traumatic brain injury, partially paralyzing her right side and ending her athletic career. It was a shot like she’s never seen before. She’s never seen anything like it. Payton is here tonight in the gallery, and Payton, from now on, schools will kick the men off the girls team, or they will lose all federal funding. And if you really want to see numbers, just take a look at what happened in the woman’s boxing, weight lifting, track and field, swimming or cycling, where a male recently finished a long distance race five hours and 14 minutes ahead of a woman for a new record. By five hours. Broke the record by five hours. It’s demeaning for women, and it’s very bad for our country. We’re not going to put up with it any longer. What I have just described is only a small fraction of the common sense revolution that is now—because of us—sweeping the entire world. Common sense has become a common theme, and we will never go back. Never, ever going to let that happen. Among my very highest priorities is to rescue our economy and get dramatic and immediate relief to working families. As you know, we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare. Their policies drove up energy prices, pushed up grocery costs, and drove the necessities of life out of reach for millions and millions of Americans. They’ve—never had anything like it. We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country, they’re not sure. As President, I’m fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again. Joe Biden, especially, let the price of eggs get out of control—the egg prices, out of control. And we’re working hard to get it back down. Secretary, do a good job on that. You inherited a total mess from the previous Administration. Do a good job. A major focus of our fight to defeat inflation is rapidly reducing the cost of energy. The previous administration cut the number of new oil and gas leases by 95%, slowed pipeline construction to a halt, and closed more than 100 power plants. We are opening up many of those power plants right now. And frankly, we have never seen anything like it. That’s why, on my first day in office, I declared a National Energy emergency. As you’ve heard me say many times, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any nation on earth, and by far. And now I fully authorize the most talented team ever assembled to go and get it. It’s called “Drill, Baby, Drill.” My administration is also working on a gigantic natural gas pipeline in Alaska, among the largest in the world, where Japan, South Korea and other nations want to be our partner, with investments of trillions of dollars each. There’s never been anything like that one. It will be truly spectacular. It’s all set to go. The permitting is gotten, and later this week, I will also take historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths here in the USA. To further combat inflation, we will not only be reducing the cost of energy, but we’ll be ending the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars. And to that end, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency—DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Everybody here, even this side [pointing to Democrats in the chamber], appreciates it, I believe. They just don’t want to admit that. Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified: $22 billion from HHS to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens. $45 million for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. $8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of, $60 million for indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian empowerment in Central America. $60 million. $8 million for making mice transgender. This is real. $32 million for a left-wing propaganda operation in Moldova. $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique. $20 million for the Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East. It’s a program. $20 million for a program. $1.9 billion to recently-created decarbonization of homes committee headed up, and we know she’s involved, just at the last moment, the money was passed over by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her? A $3.5 million consulting contract for lavish fish monitoring. $1.5 billion for voter confidence in Liberia, $14 million for social cohesion in Mali, $59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City. He’s a real estate developer. He’s done very well. $250,000 to increase vegan local climate action innovation in Zambia, $42 million for social and behavior change in Uganda, $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia, $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia. Asia is doing very well with learning. You know what we’re doing? We should use it ourselves. And $101 million for DEI contracts at the Department of Education, the most ever paid, nothing even like it. Under the Trump Administration, all of these scams—and there are far worse, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about them, they’re so bad—many more have been found out and exposed and swiftly terminated by a group of very intelligent, mostly young people, headed up by Elon. We appreciate it. We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. And we’ve taken back the money and reduced our debt to fight inflation and other things. Taken back a lot of that money, we got it just in time. This is just the beginning. The Government Accountability Office, a federal government office, has estimated annual fraud of over $500 billion in our nation, and we are working very hard to stop it. We’re going to. We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don’t know any of them—I know some people that are rather elderly, but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we’re searching right now. In fact, Pam [Bondi], good luck, good luck. You’re going to find it. But a lot of money is paid out to people because it just keeps getting paid and paid, and nobody does. And it really hurts Social Security and hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby [Kennedy Jr.]. Including—to finish—1039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249 and one person is listed at 360 years of age—more than 100 years, more than 100 years older than our country. But we’re going to find out where that money is going, and it’s not going to be pretty. By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors and put more money in the pockets of American families. And today, interest rates took a beautiful drop. Big, beautiful drop. It’s about time. And in the near future, I want to do what has not been done in 24 years: balance the federal budget. We’re going to balance it. With that goal in mind, we have developed in great detail what we are calling the “gold card” which goes on sale very, very soon. For $5 million, we will allow the most successful job-creating people from all over the world to buy a path to U.S. citizenship. It’s like the green card, but better and more sophisticated. And these people will have to pay tax in our country. They won’t have to pay tax from where they came. The money that they’ve made. You wouldn’t want to do that. But they have to pay tax, create jobs. They’ll also be taking people out of colleges and paying for them so that we can keep them in our country, instead of having them be—being forced out. Number one at the top school as an example, being forced out and not being allowed to stay and create tremendous numbers of jobs in great success for a company out there. So while we take out the criminals, killers, traffickers and child predators who are allowed to enter our country under the open-border policy of these people, the Democrats, the Biden Administration, the open border, insane policies that you’ve allowed to destroy our country, we will now bring in brilliant, hardworking, job-creating people. They’re going to pay a lot of money, and we’re going to reduce our debt with that money. Americans have given us a mandate for bold and profound change. For nearly 100 years, the federal bureaucracy has grown until it has crushed our freedoms, ballooned our deficits and held back America’s potential in every possible way. The nation founded by pioneers and risktakers now drowns under millions and millions of pages of regulations and debt. Approvals that should take 10 days to get instead, take 10 years, 15 years and even 20 years before you reject it. Meanwhile, we have hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work. My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy, and we will restore true democracy to America again. And any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately, because we are draining the swamp. It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over. And the next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody. They’re in there. They’re waiting for you to vote. And I’m sure that the people on my right, I don’t mean the Republican right, but my right, right here [points to Democrats], I’m sure you’re going to vote for those tax cuts. Because otherwise, I don’t believe the people will ever vote you into office. So I’m doing a big favor by telling you that. But I know this group is going to be voting for the tax. Thank you. It’s a very, very big part of our plan. We had tremendous success in our first term with it. A very big part of our plan. We’re seeking permanent income tax cuts all across the board, and to get urgently needed relief to Americans hit especially hard by inflation. I’m calling for no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security benefits for our great seniors. And I also want to make interest payments on car loans tax-deductible, but only if the car is made in America. And by the way, we’re gonna have growth in the auto industry like nobody’s ever seen. Plants are opening up all over the place. Deals are being made, never seen. That’s a combination of the election win and tariffs. It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it? That along with our other policies will allow our auto industry to absolutely boom. It’s gonna boom. Spoke to the majors today, all three, the top people and they’re so excited. In fact, already, numerous car companies have announced that they will be building massive automobile plants in America with Honda just announcing a new plant in Indiana, one of the largest anywhere in the world. And this has taken place since our great victory on November 5th, a date which will hopefully go down as one of the most important in the history of our country. In addition, as part of our tax cuts, we want to cut taxes on domestic production and all manufacturing. And just as we did before, we will provide 100% expensing. It will be retroactive to January 20th, 2025. And it was one of the main reasons why our tax cuts were so successful in our first term, giving us the most successful economy in the history of our country. First term. We had a great first term. If you don’t make your product in America, however, under the Trump Administration, you’ll pay a tariff and in some cases, a rather large one. Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries. On average, the European Union, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Canada—have you heard of them?—and countless other nations charge us tremendously higher tariffs than we charge them. It’s very unfair. India charges us auto tariffs higher than 100%. China’s average tariff on our products is twice what we charge them. And South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher. Think of that: four times higher. And we give so much help militarily and in so many other ways to South Korea. But that’s what happens. This is happening by friend and foe. This system is not fair to the United States and never was. And so on April 2nd—I wanted to make it April 1st, but I didn’t want to be accused of April Fool’s Day. That’s what that’s not. Just one day was… Cost us a lot of money, but we’re going to do it in April. I’m a very superstitious person. April 2nd, reciprocal tariffs kick in and whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them. That’s reciprocal—back and forth. Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs to keep us out of their market, then we will do non-monetary barriers to keep them out of our market. There’s a lot of that too. They don’t even allow us in their market. We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before. I did it with China and I did it with others and the Biden Administration couldn’t do anything about it because it was so much money. They couldn’t do anything about it. We have been ripped off for decades by nearly every country on earth. And we will not let that happen any longer. Much has been said over the last three months about Mexico and Canada, but we have very large deficits with both of them. But even more importantly, they’ve allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before, killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens and many very young, beautiful people, destroying families. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. They are in effect receiving subsidies of hundreds of billions of dollars. We pay subsidies to Canada and to Mexico of hundreds of billions of dollars. And the United States will not be doing that any longer. We’re not gonna do it any longer. Thanks to our “America First” policies we’re putting into place. We have had $1.7 trillion of new investment in America in just the past few weeks. The combination of the election, and our economic policies—that people of SoftBank, one of the most brilliant anywhere in the world, announced a $200-billion investment. OpenAI and Oracle Larry Ellison announced $500 billion investment, which they wouldn’t have done if Kamala [Harris] had won. Apple announced $500-billion investment. Tim Cook called me, he said I cannot spend it fast enough. It’s gonna be much higher than that I believe. They’ll be building their plants here instead of in China. And just yesterday, Taiwan Semiconductor—the biggest in the world, most powerful in the world, has a tremendous amount, 97% of the market—announced a $165-billion investment to build the most powerful chips on Earth right here in the USA. And we’re not giving them any money. [To Democrats] Your CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing. We give hundreds of billions of dollars and it doesn’t mean a thing. They take our money and they don’t spend it. All that meant to them—we’re giving them no money. All that was important to them was they didn’t want to pay the tariffs. So they came and they’re building and many other companies are coming. We don’t have to give them money. We just wanna protect our businesses and our people and they will come because they won’t have to pay tariffs if they build in America. So it’s very amazing. You should get rid of the CHIP Act and whatever’s left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt or any other reason you want to. Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer. I love the farmer, who will now be selling into our home market, the USA, because nobody is gonna be able to compete with you. Because there’s goods that come in from other company—countries and companies. They’re un—really, really in a bad position in so many different ways. They’re uninspected. They may be very dirty and disgusting and they come in and they pour in and they hurt our American farmers. The tariffs will go on agricultural product coming into America and our, our farmers starting on April 2nd—it may be a little bit of an adjustment period. We had that before when I made the deal with China. $50 billion of purchases. And I said, “Just bear with me.” And they did. They did. Probably have to bear with me again and this will be even better. That was great. The problem with it was that Biden didn’t enforce it. He didn’t enforce it. $50 billion of purchases. And we were doing great, but Biden did not enforce it. And it hurt our farmers. But our farmers are gonna have a field day right now. So to our farmers, have a lot of fun. I love you too. I love you too. It’s all gonna happen. And I have also imposed a 25% tariff on foreign aluminum, copper, lumber, and steel. Because if we don’t have, as an example, steel, and lots of other things, we don’t have a military and frankly won’t have—we just won’t have a country very long. Here today is a proud American steel worker, fantastic person from Decatur, Alabama. Jeff Denard has been working at the same steel plant for 27 years in a job that has allowed him to serve as the captain of his local volunteer fire department, raised seven children with his beautiful wife, Nicole, and over the years provide a loving home for more than 40 foster children. So great Jeff. Thank you Jeff. Thank you Jeff. Stories like Jeff’s remind us that tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs, they’re about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening and it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we are okay with that. It won’t be much. [To Democrats responding in audience] No, you’re not. Oh. And look—and look where Biden took us. Very low, the lowest we’ve ever been. Jeff, I want to thank you very much. And I also wanna recognize another person who has devoted herself to foster care community. She worked so hard on it. A very loving person, our magnificent First Lady of the United States. Melania’s work has yielded incredible results, helping prepare our nation’s future leaders as they enter the workforce. Our First Lady is joined by two impressive young women, very impressive. Haley Ferguson, who benefited from the First Lady’s Fostering the Future initiative and is poised to complete her education and become a teacher. And Elliston Berry, who became a victim of an illicit deep fake image produced by a peer. With Elliston’s help, the Senate just passed the Take It Down Act. And this is so important. Thank you very much, John. John Thune. Thank you. Stand up John. Thank you John. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to John Thune and the Senate. Great job to criminalize the publication of such images online. It’s terrible… terrible thing. And once it passes the House, I look forward to signing that bill into law. Thank you. And I’m gonna use that bill for myself too, if you don’t mind. ‘Cause nobody gets treated worse than I do online—nobody. That’s great. Thank you very much to the Senate. Thank you. But if we truly care about protecting Americans’ children, no step is more crucial than securing America’s borders. Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States. Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members, and other criminals from the streets of dangerous cities all throughout the world ’cause of Joe Biden’s insane and very dangerous open border policies. They’re now strongly embedded in our country, but we are getting them out and getting them out fast. And I wanna thank Tom Homan and Kristi [Noem], I wanna thank you and Paul [Perez] of Border Patrol. I want to thank you. What a job they’ve all done. Everybody. Border Patrol, ICE, law enforcement in general is incredible. We have to take care of our law enforcement. Have to. Last year, a brilliant 22-year-old nursing student named Laken Riley, the best in her class, admired by everybody, went out for a jog on the campus of the University of Georgia. That morning, Laken was viciously attacked, assaulted, beaten, brutalized, and horrifically murdered. Laken was stolen from us by a savage, illegal alien gang member who was arrested while trespassing across Biden’s open southern border and then set loose into the United States under the heartless policies of that failed administration. It was indeed a failed administration. He had then been arrested and released in a Democrat-run sanctuary city, a disaster, before ending the life of this beautiful young angel. With us this evening, our Laken’s beloved mother Allyson and her sister Lauren. Last year, I told Laken’s grieving parents that we would ensure their daughter would not have died in vain. That’s why the very first bill I signed into law as your 47th President, mandates the detention of all dangerous criminal aliens who threaten public safety. It’s a very strong, powerful act. It’s called the Laken Riley Act. So Allyson and Lauren, America will never ever forget our beautiful Laken Hope Riley. Thank you very much. Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crosses ever recorded. Thank you. The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new President. Thank you. Joe Biden didn’t just open our borders—he flew illegal aliens over them to overwhelm our schools, hospitals and communities throughout the country. Entire towns like Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody’s ever seen before. Beautiful towns destroyed. Now just as I promised in my inaugural address, we are achieving the great liberation of America. But there still is much work to be done. Here tonight is a woman I have gotten to know: Alexis Nungaray from Houston. Wonderful woman. Last June, Alexis’s 12-year-old daughter, her precious Jocelyn, walked to a nearby convenience store. She was kidnapped, tied up, assaulted for two hours under a bridge and horrifically murdered. Arrested, and charged with this heinous crime are two illegal alien monsters from Venezuela released into America by the last administration through their ridiculous open border. The death of this beautiful 12-year-old girl and the agony of her mother and family touched our entire nation greatly. Alexis, I promised that we would always remember your daughter, your magnificent daughter. And earlier tonight I signed an order keeping my word to you. One thing I have learned about Jocelyn is that she loved animals so much. She loved nature. Across Galveston Bay, from where Jocelyn lived in Houston, you’ll find a magnificent national wildlife refuge, a pristine, peaceful 34,000-acre sanctuary for all of God’s creatures on the edge of the “Gulf of America.” Alexis, moments ago, I formally renamed that refuge in loving memory of your beautiful daughter Jocelyn. So Mr. Vice President, if you would, may I have the order. [shows the Executive Order to Congress.] Thank you very much. All three savages charged with Jocelyn and Laken’s murders were members of the Venezuelan prison gang, the toughest gang, they say, in the world known as Tren de Aragua. Two weeks ago I officially designated this gang along with MS-13 and the blood-thirsty Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. They are now officially in the same category as ISIS and that’s not good for them. Countless thousands of these terrorists were welcomed into the U.S. by the Biden Administration, but now every last one will be rounded up and forcibly removed from our country. Or if they’re too dangerous, put in jails standing trial in this country—’cause we don’t want them to come back ever. With us this evening is a warrior on the frontlines of that battle: Border Patrol agent Roberto Ortiz. Great guy. In January, Roberto and another agent were patrolling by the Rio Grande near an area known as Cartel Island. Doesn’t sound too nice to me. When heavily armed gunmen started shooting at them, Roberto saw that his partner was totally exposed, great danger, and he leapt into action returning fire and providing crucial seconds for his fellow agent to seek safety just and just barely. I have some of the prints of that event and it was not good. Agent Ortiz, we salute you for your great courage and uh, for your line of fire that you took and for the bravery that you showed, we honor you and we will always honor you. Thank you, Roberto, very much. Thank you Roberto. And I actually got to know him on my many calls to the border. He’s a great, great gentleman. The territory to the immediate south of our border is now dominated entirely by criminal cartels that murder, rape, torture, and exercise total control. They have total control over a whole nation, posing a grave threat to our national security. The cartels are waging war in America and it’s time for America to wage war on the cartels, which we’re doing. Five nights ago, Mexican authorities, because of our tariff policies being imposed on them—think of this—handed over to us 29 of the biggest cartel leaders in their country. That has never happened before. They wanna make us happy. First time ever. But we need Mexico and Canada to do much more than they’ve done. And they have to stop the fentanyl and drugs pouring into the USA, they’re gonna stop it. I have sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out exactly how we will eliminate these threats to protect our homeland and complete the largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a moderate man, but someone who believed very strongly in borders. Americans expect Congress to send me this funding without delay so I can sign it into law. So Mr. Speaker, John Thune, both of you, I—I hope you’re gonna be able to do that. Mr. Speaker, thank you. Mr. Leader, thank you. Thank you very much and let’s get it to me. I’ll sign it so fast, you won’t even believe it. And as we reclaim our sovereignty, we must also bring back law and order to our cities and towns. In recent years, our justice system has been turned upside down by radical left lunatics, many jurisdictions virtually seized, enforcing the law against dangerous repeat offenders while weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents like me. My administration has acted swiftly and decisively to restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law, starting at the FBI and the DOJ. Pam, good luck. Kash [Patel], wherever you may be. Good luck. Good luck, Pam Bondi. Good luck. So important. Gonna do a great job. Kash, thank you. Thank you, Kash. They’ve already started very strong. They’re going to do a fantastic job. You’re gonna be very proud of them. We’re also, once again, giving our police officers the support, protection and respect they so dearly deserve. They have to get it. They have such a hard, dangerous job, but we’re gonna make it less dangerous. The problem is the bad guys don’t respect the law, but they’re starting to respect it and they soon will respect it. This also includes our great fire departments throughout the country. Our firemen and women are unbelievable people and I will never forget them. And besides that, they voted for me in record numbers so I have no choice. One year ago this month, 31-year-old New York police officer, Jonathan Diller, unbelievably wonderful person and a great officer, was gunned down at a traffic stop on Long Island. I went to his funeral. The vicious criminal charged with his murder, had 21 prior arrests—and they were rough arrests too. He was a real bad one—The thug in the seat next to him had 14 prior arrests and went by the name of Killer. He was “Killer.” He killed other people, they say, a lot of them. I attended Officer Diller’s service and when I met his wife and 1-year-old son Ryan, it was very inspirational actually. His widow’s name is Stephanie and she is here tonight. Stephanie, thank you very much, Stephanie. Thank you. Stephanie, we’re going to make sure that Ryan knows his dad was a true hero—New York’s finest. And we are going to get these cold-blooded killers and repeat offenders off our streets. And we’re gonna do it fast. Gotta stop it. They get out with 28 arrests, they push people into subway trains, they hit people over the head, back of the head with baseball bats. We gotta get ’em outta here. I have already signed an Executive Order requiring a mandatory death penalty for anyone who murders a police officer. And tonight I’m asking Congress to pass that policy into permanent law. I’m also asking for a new crime bill getting tough on repeat offenders while enhancing protections for America’s police officers so they can do their jobs without fear of their lives being totally destroyed. They don’t wanna be killed. We’re not gonna let ’em be killed. [Uproar in audience] Joining us in the gallery tonight is a young man who truly loves our police. His name is DJ Daniel. He is 13 years old and he has always dreamed of becoming a police officer. But in 2018, DJ was diagnosed with brain cancer. The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago. Since that time, DJ and his dad have been on a quest to make his dream come true. And DJ has been sworn in as an honorary law enforcer—officer, actually a number of times. The police love him. The police departments love him. And tonight DJ, we’re going to do you the biggest honor of them all. I am asking our new Secret Service director, Sean Curran, to officially make you an agent of the United States Secret Service.

If you’re a member of the Society of Black Engineers at West Point, you can probably forget about attending the national group’s annual conference next month. That’s because the United States Military Academy, one of five American service academies, that trains cadets for the U.S. Army is disbanding its Society of Black Engineers chapter as well as at least 11 other clubs, according to a recent internal memorandum that circulated online. The memo, issued in accordance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders cracking down on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and offices across the federal government, instructs 12 specific clubs to immediately cease all formal and informal activities and remove public facing content. The move comes after the U.S. Army and Air Force shuttered their respective DEI offices and programs and removed related media and trainings on Jan. 23. The disbanded clubs, all of which have had their webpages removed from the academy’s site, were listed under “affinity” groups on West Point’s club directory, which has also been removed as of publication. The pages, according to digital archives, were available online as recently as last week. The list of banned student groups, all of which were open to all cadets irrespective of identity, includes the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, which “promotes the general knowledge and application of knowledge about the Asian-Pacific region”; the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, which supported cadets “transitioning from civilian to cadet and cadet to officer” through “academic services, mentorship, professional development opportunities, and community outreach programs”; the Corbin Forum, which aimed to promote women’s leadership within the Army; the Japanese Forum Club, which described itself as a place for promoting “understanding and appreciation of Japanese culture and language”; the Korean American Relations Seminar, which focused on education around the Korean American experience; the Latin Cultural Club, which operated two subordinate clubs: West Point Latin Dance and the mentorship- and outreach-focused Latina Connection; the Native American Heritage Forum, which had the mission to “educate members of the Corps of Cadets about the history, heritage, and current affairs of Native Americans”; Spectrum, a social club that provided support to LGBTQ cadets and promoted acceptance of LGBTQ people in the military community; and the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association, which aimed to increase “cultural awareness of the Vietnamese-American experience” and the “legacy of Vietnamese-American veterans.” It also included the West Point chapters of the National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers. An archived version of the academy’s club directory emphasizes the availability and variety of clubs as assets in training cadets to be “well-rounded leaders of character.” The academy’s webpage on leadership development similarly points to its clubs and activities as tools for developing cadets’ civic character and grit. But, as of Feb. 5, every club webpage has been removed, at least temporarily, seemingly in accordance with the memo, which stated that all other clubs not listed for disbandment are to cease activities until they are reviewed and revalidated to ensure they align with President Trump’s executive orders and Department of Defense guidance. TIME has requested comment from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which did not immediately respond. The memorandum, first posted on the West Point subreddit and then on X, has drawn ire from some who feel the ban is discriminatory. “I am sure all the Eurocentric, Christian events that are still embedded in daily activities and federal holidays will still continue. It is discriminatory to get rid of all the non-white ones,” one Reddit user wrote. “Why can’t we let Americans with other cultures celebrate their heritage also?” Some users pointed out that affinity-like clubs listed as academic clubs, such as the West Point Polish Club (also known as the Kosciuszko Squadron), which described itself as “an association of cadets who explore and enjoy Polish culture, history, and language,” were not singled out for disbandment. Similarly, the West Point Humanist Society, which described itself as aiming to “build a community at West Point that is welcoming to freethinkers while espousing the ideals of scientific rationality, secularism, and human-based ethics,” was the only affinity club that was not explicitly listed in the memo. Other users criticized the disbandment as narrow-sighted, suggesting it might impact future enrollment. “Answers the age old question ‘How do I adversely impact the morale, identity, and professionalism of our military professionals?’” wrote one X user. “I worked for the main Space Shuttle subcontractor for many years,” another X user wrote. “Many different ethnicities worked there and I see absolutely nothing wrong with these societies. My young granddaughter wants to be an engineer.” But others described the move as “appropriate” and “how it should be.” “Those particular types of organizations, designed and intended to separate out specific groups, never belonged at West Point, or any other military school,” wrote one user. Knights Out, an association of LGBTQ West Point graduates and their allies, published a statement in response to the Trump administration’s efforts to ban trans servicemembers “as well as deny any public recognition of LGBTQIA identities.” The group said it is working with West Point and the other military academies to understand the implications on queer cadets and servicemembers and reiterated its support: “No executive order or policy will stop us from protecting and preserving our extraordinary community—who show us every day that service to the nation is not dependent on individual identity. Our military serves all Americans; all Americans should be able to serve in it.”

On the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 31, World Relief, an evangelical charity that helps resettle refugees around the world, but especially in the U.S., got an order from the U.S. Department of State to stop all work under its contract with the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. This was confusing, since that evening a group of Afghans who had served alongside Americans in the long-running conflict there were arriving into Sacramento airport, and the nonprofit group was contracted by State to take care of them. "It said, stop all work," says Matthew Soerens, the vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief. "But we were not going to not show up at the airport. We were not going to not make sure that they had a place to sleep that night and a warm meal." It's not a heavy lift to meet people at an airport and buy them a meal. What worries the folks at World Relief more is who was going to pay their rent for the next 90 days? Usually that time period is covered by federal money distributed through various partners so that refugees have time to get on their feet and find a job, but now the State Department has ordered World Relief and other charities to immediately cease doing that. And who was going to pay rent for the thousands of other families World Relief was supporting, both in the U.S. and overseas? Since the inauguration, the incoming Administration has imposed spending freezes and stop-work orders on a wide swath of American foreign-aid enterprises. Funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)—which, at roughly $40 billion, accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget—was paused for 90 days on all but a very narrow set of programs, mostly involving life-threatening hunger or medical emergencies. Many USAID contractors and staff were fired or put on administrative leave, the USAID website was closed down, and similar cuts were made to the developmental and humanitarian programs of the State Department. On Feb. 4, a few days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would run USAID for the time being, the rest of the staff—all except those "responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs"—were also put on leave and those working in overseas missions were told that arrangements would be made for them to return to the U.S. within 30 days. Evangelical and other Christian charities have not been spared these cuts. Among the organizations that lost funding are such Christian behemoths as World Vision, International Justice Mission, Samaritan's Purse, and Catholic Relief Services, which at $476 million, was the largest USAID recipient in 2024. Because of the vagueness of the language around which programs would still be funded, some groups pulled back their spending, just in case. "World Vision is responding to the executive order that pauses U.S. foreign assistance funding—with the exception of emergency food assistance—for the next 90 days, while programs are reviewed for alignment with the current administration’s foreign policy," said the international relief organization in a statement to TIME. But others decided to go ahead anyway. "Although we received suspension orders, we have not halted our work in Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia," says a spokeswoman for Medical Teams International in an email. "We have chosen this course for the time being because as a Christian organization, we center our decisions on the worth and dignity of ALL people—the people we serve and our staff." So far only one portion of a program in Uganda has received a waiver to keep operating and the organization recognizes it might not be reimbursed for other programs. "It is our understanding that life-sustaining essential emergency supplies are exempt from the stop order," said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse, in a statement to TIME. "However the details of the waiver process are not yet clear." He added that his organization, which receives less than 5% of its international aid budget from USAID, would continue to fund the projects, which are in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia. Some of the organizations have supporters inside the Trump Administration or the State Department and are trying to use back channels to find some clarity on the future of USAID and the projects it funds. And there are others who are calling on the President to reverse course. "If President Trump understood that evangelical Christians wanted secure borders, he's absolutely right," says Soerens. "If he understood that evangelical Christians wanted refugees shut out who had been thoroughly vetted, who in many cases are persecuted Christians, then he got that wrong." While 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump, Soerens points to a new survey by LifeWay Research, the Southern Baptist Convention's polling firm, found that 70% of evangelicals in the U.S. say they believe the U.S. has a moral responsibility to receive refugees. This may be why, in the two weeks since the government funds were paused, World Relief has raised $3 million, most of it from small donors. It's not going to be enough, however, to pay the three months of rent that the government had promised. "There's about 4,000 people, who the government invited to come to United States, and arranged plane travel for," he says. "It's very different from some of the other immigration debates." The group estimates there will be an $8 million funding hole in their budget if the U.S. government decides to not pay rent for legal refugees. For Christians who worked with USAID, the stop-work orders, the suspension of funding, and the steady stream of denigration of the agency's work from Elon Musk, who tweeted that it is "evil," and Trump adviser Stephen Miller are a profound betrayal of what they consider a sacred vocation. "I'm here to do what I can, to be the hands and feet of God in this world," says Anne Linn, who has spent most of her career working on alleviating malaria, both on the ground in different parts of Africa and in Washington, D.C. "Like, what can I do to alleviate the suffering of others, of my neighbors?" She was laid off on Friday when her contract with the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative, like World Relief's, was canceled. Linn acknowledges that many Americans would like the malaria-stricken countries to pay for their own health care and not rely so heavily on the U.S. "Those countries want that too," she says. "But so much of their GDP goes to servicing debt. We have to give them a runway. It can't just happen overnight." In the meantime, in some of the countries with which she has worked, the rainy season is about to start; the mosquitos will arrive and the bed nets won't, because they're stuck in a warehouse and the people contracted to deliver them also have a stop-work order. She fears for the pregnant mothers and the children under 5, whom malaria can kill. "Who can read the words of Jesus Christ and think this is OK?" she asks. "That is baffling to me. If we say that we are pro-life, we cannot be OK with this."

Inflation-weary consumers chose Donald J. Trump for President in part because they were sick of seeing prices continue to rise. Now, in the first few weeks of the Trump Administration, prices for homes, cars, fuel, and food are expected to jump once again because of the tariffs Trump announced Feb. 1 on Mexico, Canada, and China. Mexico said Feb. 3 that it had reached a deal with the U.S. to delay its tariffs for a month as the two countries negotiate on border security, but the blanket 25% tariffs Trump threatened could still hit later. Trump also struck a deal with Canada to delay his 25% tariffs on Canadian goods (10% on oil and natural gas) for a month. But 10% tariffs on China are expected to go into effect Feb. 4. Experts say consumer prices on a number of goods are almost sure to rise if these tariffs are in effect for more than a few months. The right-leaning Tax Foundation estimates that the proposed tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China could add more than $800 of costs to each U.S. household in 2025. Home prices shot up in 2020 and have barely moderated since, but there’s more pain to come for potential buyers, experts say. Materials for homebuilding are getting more and more expensive, and the tariffs won’t help: more than 70% of imports of softwood lumber comes from Canada, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The 25% tariff on softwood lumber comes on top of a 14.5% tariff already in place, according to the NAHB. Mexico supplies the U.S. with gypsum, a building material used for drywall, and the price of it is expected to climb when those tariffs go into effect. Tariffs on lumber “increase the cost of construction and discourage new development,” said Carl Harris, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, in a statement. Consumers may end up paying in the form of higher home prices, which are already up about 40% since 2020. America has a chronic shortage of homes, and many experts say building houses is the key to easing costs. Last year was already a slow time for homebuilding; construction was started on only about 1.4 million units, the lowest level since 2019 and a 4% decline from 2023. That’s partly because of costs. Inputs to residential construction—essentially labor and materials—are up more than 30% since Jan. 2021. The Trump Administration’s round-up of migrants will also drive the cost of labor up, says Jeff Schott, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics. The roundups will leave fewer construction workers available, he says. Autos There are few industries with supply chains that straddle borders as much as automobiles. Parts can be sent across the border to Canada and other countries and then back again numerous times as a car is made, says William Reinsch, senior advisor at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Even if the tariffs are just on Canada, this is going to royally mess up automobile supply chains,” he says. The U.S. and Canada have had a free trade agreement on automobiles that goes back to the 1970s and predates NAFTA, Reinsch says. The tariffs on Mexico and Canada could increase the price of a sedan by around $2,000, says Michael Hicks, an economist at Ball State University in Indiana. The cost of a big SUV would go up even more because it has so many different electronic components, he says, estimating that a $50,000 U.S. made car could see its prices increase by $5,000 because of the tariffs. Energy Canada is a big supplier of energy, including crude oil, natural gas, and hydropower. Although the energy tariffs on Canadian imports are a bit lower, at 10%, that will still have an impact, says Reinsch. This could lead to pain at the pump in the Midwest, he says, where crude oil from Alberta is sent to refineries which turn it into gasoline. Gas prices in the Midwest peaked in June 2022 at nearly $5 per gallon, according to the Energy Information Administration. They’ve come down since but started ticking up again in January. “These refineries can’t easily shift to another kind of oil,” Reinsch says, meaning they’ll continue to import Canadian crude and pay the tariffs. The energy tariffs could also bump up energy prices in New England and New York, which get some of their electricity from Canadian hydropower. About 53% of Hydro-Quebec’s sales outside of Quebec came from New England in 2023, and 10% came from New York, according to the company’s annual report. The New England Independent Systems Operator, which operates the region’s electricity transmission network, said in a statement that about 9% of electricity demand in New England was met through imports from Canada and New York. Food The U.S. grows a lot of food, but it is increasingly reliant on Mexico and Canada for fresh produce, according to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. The volume of imported fresh vegetables alone rose nearly 200% over the past two decades. The tariffs on Canadian imports will affect prices of a few other foods in particular. About 75% of the world’s maple syrup is made in Canada, and the U.S. was the world’s top importer of the stuff in 2023, buying about $280 million dollars worth, according to the World Bank. Even maple syrup made in Vermont and other places in the Northeast could be affected by the tariffs; most of the equipment used in producing it is made in Canada. Companies in Vermont are frantically moving maple equipment over the border, according to the Maple News, a Vermont trade publication. The U.S. also imports about $17 billion worth of Canadian grain and grain products every year, according to the Grain Growers of Canada. The grain is used for products like bread, pasta, biofuels, feed, and brewing. “Whether you’re growing crops or buying groceries, these tariffs will make life more expensive at a time when most are already being priced out,” Tara Sawyer, an Alberta farmer and chair of the Grain Growers of Canada, said in a statement. Cheap Stuff Online Many economists aren’t thinking as much about how the 10% tariffs on China might affect consumers because those tariffs are relatively small compared to the ones announced on the U.S.’s North American counterparts. But there’s one part of the tariffs in particular that could have a big impact on stuff from China. It’s known as the de minimus provision. For years, companies sending cheap goods to U.S. consumers have been able to avoid tariffs because of the provision, which exempts goods that cost less than $800 from tariffs and inspection. That’s allowed Chinese retailers to send stuff directly to U.S. consumers and avoid taxes that would otherwise be levied on them. One Congressional report from June 2024 found that Chinese e-commerce sites Temu and Shein account for more than 30% of all packages shipped to the U.S. every day under the de minimus provision. The latest executive orders on tariffs, however, suspend the de minimis provision, saying that it has been used to funnel fentanyl into the U.S. One memo from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office obtained by TIME said that, as of Feb. 4, 2025, “Requests for de minimis entry and clearance for ineligible shipments will be rejected.” This could mean that some of that stuff you’re buying on the Internet, from clothes and cheap electronics to furniture, is likely to become a little more expensive soon.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. For the first time in weeks, it looks like Democrats are summoning something passing for a plan to counter the unapologetic chaos radiating from the reinstalled administration of President Donald Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has laid out a 10-step plan for slowing down Trump. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii says he will force Republicans to waste valuable floor time on State Department nominations by attaching blanket holds to all of them. First-term Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, a Bidenesque pragmatist of the first order, declared flatly that she was a no on all Trump nominees going forward, a gutsy move that signaled even the most centrist of lawmakers were nearing the end of their patience. And, among Democratic strategists, there is a not-even-subtle chatter about recruiting candidates for districts laden with federal workers, including four where Republican incumbents have more than 25,000 feds underfoot. There are also three Republicans representing three districts that went blue in the 2024 presidential campaign. Nothing spurs a conversion like a potential shift in power. The proof-of-life moment for Democrats comes as Trump’s third week begins with the same fury as the last two. The difference now may be Trump’s new hatchet man, Elon Musk, stepping to the front of the stage, as he gleefully remakes government as a shadow of itself. In response, a feisty pushback has finally started to take hold, replacing prop-driven press conferences with a rallying cry for voters to pay attention to what is unfolding with breakneck velocity. Democrats may not have the votes, Trump may have an above-water net approval rating, and the rank-and-file liberal base is bluntly exhausted, but nothing is permanent in politics. That’s not to say any of this gnashing is going to actually result in anything. Two of Trump’s most aggressively trolly nominees, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cleared their committee votes on Tuesday. Despite raising serious misgivings among even some conservatives, that pair now heads to full confirmation votes for gigs running the nation’s spy network and health systems. Similarly, Kash Patel seems to remain on a glide path to take over the FBI. Outside of marquee personnel choices, widespread disruption across the federal government seems inevitable. Trump is close to finalizing his legally questionable plans to shutter the Education Department. A consumer-protection bureau is on borrowed time after Trump canned its chief over the weekend. Anyone who touched politically sensitive cases at the FBI now expects to be next in the purge, following Justice Department skeptics out the door. Trump has already dispatched just about everyone in the U.S. Agency for International Development. It’s why, despite some signs of fight, some Democrats remain utterly despondent. But the reining emotion was anger on Monday, as a bustling crowd of hundreds listened to Democrats like Reps. Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Jamie Raskin of Maryland—both representing communities with outsized shares of feds—outside the shuttered headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development, not far from the White House. "Elon Musk may get to be dictator of Tesla, and he may try to play dictator here in Washington. D.C., but he doesn't get to shut down the Agency for International Development," Sen. Chris Van Hollen of fed-heavy Maryland said. (A similar such confrontation played out on Tuesday at Treasury headquarters, where a crowd led by more than a dozen Democrats in Congress were rebuffed from entering the building where Musk's DOGE team has raised alarm bells by gaining access to the department's payments system.) Back at the Capitol, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a member of the Democratic Leadership team, threw all her Musk messaging into one blast: “Let’s not mince words here. An unelected, unaccountable billionaire with expansive conflicts of interest, deep ties to China, and an indiscreet ax to grind against perceived enemies is hijacking our nation’s most sensitive financial data systems and its checkbook so that he can illegally block funds to our constituents based on the slightest whim or wildest conspiracy.” Musk may have finally got Democrats fired up, but "All Things Elon" isn’t a durable messaging plan. Banking on the public to rally against a billionaire and his buddies proved a losing strategy in 2016 and 2024 alike. Beyond that, Musk is not accountable to anyone except for Trump, and the President seems to like what Musk is unleashing. That’s not that there are no ideas to push Trump and his Republican allies to shift away from some of the more dizzying ideas. A scuttled plan to pause federal spending got heavy rejections from courts. FBI agents are trying to block the release of a list of those involved in the Trump legal sagas. A legal challenge to Trump’s anti-trans policies is moving ahead on a separate track. And two top Senators are asking Congress’ watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, to open an investigation involving Musk and his access to some of the most sensitive government spending records.

First it was buy Greenland, then make Canada a state. Now Donald Trump wants to own the Gaza Strip. The President proposed on Tuesday that the U.S. should “own” the Gaza Strip, “level the site” and develop it, explicitly calling for displacing 2 million Palestinians from their homeland as the region’s leaders struggle to maintain a fragile ceasefire. During a wide-ranging press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump laid out a sweeping plan for the U.S. to colonize Gaza and build resorts there. “I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy, but—the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be so magnificent,” Trump said. The idea would upend a centuries-old conflict over ownership of the land along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea by permanently relocating the Palestinian people. Netanyahu didn’t dismiss the concept. “I think it’s worth paying attention to. We are talking about it,” Netanyahu said. “I think it is something that could change history, and it is worthwhile really pursuing this idea.” Democrats largely balked at the suggestion, labeling it “crazy” and “morally bankrupt.” Progressive Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian American, accused Trump of “openly calling for ethnic cleansing.” Trump ally Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said he would “keep an open mind” but suggested the plan would receive pushback both at home and abroad. “We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that,” he said. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued a statement reaffirming its “unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, [including] attempts to displace them from their land.” The Kingdom had previously joined Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, and the Palestine Liberation Organization in a joint letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday that emphasized: “Reconstruction in Gaza should be through direct engagement with and participation of the people of Gaza. Palestinians will live in their land and help rebuild it.” Trump’s outlandish real-estate pitch comes at a delicate moment in the cease-fire agreement announced on Jan. 15 between Hamas and Israel, as Israel is still trying to get Hamas to hand over Israeli hostages and the remains of those who died while being held by Hamas. Ownership of the Gaza Strip and Israeli land is a central part of the conflict, with Hamas leaders threatening another invasion of Israel and right-wing Israeli settlers continuing to call for claiming land in Gaza. In a statement, Hamas called Trump’s proposal “a recipe for generating chaos and tension,” adding: “Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to pass.” More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza, where many own land and have lived there for many generations. Trump proposed ignoring all that history and having the U.S. take ownership, alluding to the monumental rebuilding facing the Palestinian people as a reason such a transfer makes sense. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out,” he said. When asked who would live there, he said: “I envision the world’s people living there.” Trump’s idea cuts against the longstanding insistence by Israel’s neighbors Egypt and Jordan that Palestinians should not be permanently displaced from their homes in Gaza. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security advisor, said that Trump spoke with Egyptian President Abdel Al Sisi on Tuesday and that Jordanian King Abdullah would visit the White House next week. Speaking with reporters before Trump’s press conference with Netanyahu, Waltz said that the extent of the damage in Gaza created a particular challenge for those in southern Gaza waiting to return to their land in the north of the strip. He said rebuilding parts of Gaza that were bombed in the war could take more than a decade, as parts are still riddled with explosives and sit on top of a honeycomb of tunnels built by Hamas. “At some point, we have to look realistically, how do you rebuild Gaza? What does that look like? What is the timeline?” Waltz said. “A lot of people were looking at very unrealistic timelines. We’re talking 10 to 15 years.”

On March 9, most people in the U.S. will set their clocks forward an hour, thanks to the start of Daylight Saving Time. But if President Donald Trump acts on what he’s said about the practice, Daylight Saving Time as we know it could change. Daylight Saving Time has long been controversial—most countries don’t participate in it, and many Americans have said they want to stop changing the clocks twice a year. Trump has expressed support for ending the practice, but recent efforts to do so have stalled, and only two states—Hawaii and most of Arizona—don’t participate in Daylight Saving Time. What has Trump said so far about Daylight Saving Time? On Dec. 13, 2024, Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.” But more than a month into his presidency, Trump has yet to make any moves on the issue since his Truth Social post, and experts are a little unsure as to what changes could be coming. David Prerau, author of Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time and an expert on the topic, says there are three options. The first is to keep the existing system of changing the clocks twice a year; currently, most of America sets the clock forward an hour starting in March for Daylight Saving Time, and sets the clock back an hour starting in November for Standard Time. The second option is to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, and the third is to make Standard Time permanent. “[Trump] said it in a very short sentence without detail so it isn’t clear which of those he meant,” Prerau says. “Most people don’t even realize that there are two other options.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking clarity on Trump’s plans for Daylight Saving Time. What would permanent Daylight Saving Time look like? Daylight Saving Time is meant to allow people to make use of the daylight in the evening during the warmer months. Making Daylight Saving Time permanent would mean advancing the clocks an hour for the entire year, so the sun would appear to rise and set an hour later, not just in the summer, but in the winter too, Prerau says. Lawmakers have tried to do this in the past. A bipartisan bill called the Sunshine Protection Act would have made Daylight Saving Time year-round, but the bill stalled, and was recently reintroduced by Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Lawmakers who have expressed support for the bill argue that changing the clock twice a year is an inconvenient disruption. “I hear from Americans constantly that they are sick and tired of changing their clocks twice a year—it’s an unnecessary, decades-old practice that’s more of an annoyance to families than benefit to them,” Scott said in a Jan. 8 press release about reintroducing the Sunshine Protection Act. “I’m excited to have President Trump back in the White House and fully on board to LOCK THE CLOCK so we can get this good bill passed and make this common-sense change that will simplify and benefit the lives of American families.” Trump has previously indicated support for such a change, tweeting in 2019, “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” Prerau says the U.S. government made Daylight Saving Time permanent before, in 1974, during an energy crisis. But the change was unpopular because the sun appeared to rise later in the morning, so many people were waking up and going to work or school in the dark. The permanent time change was repealed less than a year later. “We have tried that year-round Daylight Saving Time, and it proved very unpopular nationally,” Prerau says. Dr. David Kuhlmann, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and a sleep medicine doctor, says that while the AASM supports ending the seasonal time changes, it doesn’t support making Daylight Saving Time permanent. Rather, the academy has been advocating for making Standard Time permanent, arguing that it aligns best with our circadian rhythms and would be better for our health and safety. “[If we had permanent Daylight Saving Time] people would be waking up in darkness, and likely be going to work in darkness … versus being able to get up with the more natural rhythm of the sun,” Kuhlmann says. What would permanent Standard Time look like? Making Standard Time permanent would mean setting the clocks back an hour for the entire year, so the sun would appear to rise and set an hour earlier not just in the winter, but in the summer too. Many health and sleep experts support making Standard Time permanent because they say it would be better for our health. Kuhlmann says that toggling between Daylight Saving Time and Standard Time disrupts our sleep and circadian rhythm, which is associated with negative health effects. He points to studies that have found Daylight Saving Time to be associated with an increased risk of motor vehicle accidents and an increased risk of stroke and hospital admissions, among other impacts. He adds that the effects of the “circadian misalignment” from Daylight Saving Time don't just last for a few days after the clocks change, but for the entire eight months that we use Daylight Saving Time. Generally speaking, making Standard Time permanent would allow us to wake up with the sun year-round, Kuhlmann says, and so would be better aligned with our circadian rhythm and ultimately more beneficial for our health. “From a circadian alignment perspective … it’s really the only choice that’s healthy,” Kuhlmann says. Prerau says the cons of making Standard Time permanent are that, in the summer, many people would likely still be sleeping when the sun appears to rise earlier, and they wouldn’t get to take advantage of the daylight in the evening since the sun would appear to set earlier. Rather than changing the current practice, he suggests that officials improve messaging, such as through public service announcements, to help people better prepare for and anticipate the seasonal time changes. “The current system is really a compromise between those two possibilities and it’s actually, in my opinion, better than either one because you’re getting the best of both,” Prerau says.