• New tariff threat: In Oval Office remarks, President Donald Trump warned about new tariffs as soon as today on Canadian lumber and dairy products. It comes a day after Trump signed executive orders Thursday delaying tariffs until April 2 on goods from both Mexico and Canada that are covered by the trade agreement signed between the three countries during his first term.
• Warning to Russia: Trump said he is considering new sanctions on Russia, including on its banking sector, in response to Moscow’s continued bombardment of Ukraine — a notable threat after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin.
• DOGE ruling: A federal judge is denying an attempt by federal workers’ unions to lock down potentially private personal information from the Department of Government Efficiency’s work in the Treasury Department. The job cuts by Elon Musk’s government efficiency team began to show up in the latest jobs report released Friday, with federal government employment shrinking by 10,000 jobs.
• Crypto summit: Trump is hosting the first White House crypto summit Friday. Ahead of the summit, the president established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said he spoke with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio Friday about the two nations’ upcoming negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, describing the call as “constructive.”
“Ukraine wants the war to end, and US leadership is essential for achieving lasting peace. We also discussed ways to advance our bilateral cooperation,” Sybiha said on X.
The forthcoming meetings in Saudi Arabia follow previous conversations between the US and Russia, from which Kyiv was excluded.
Meantime: Trump has threatened new sanctions on Russia, including on its banking sector, in response to Moscow’s continued bombardment of Ukraine. The president’s top economist told reporters at the White House Friday that Trump’s threat is an effort to bring parties to the negotiating table.
Hassett said which approach the administration decides to go with “is something that’s a work in progress,” but that both Trump and Rubio “are working on that every day.”
President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday that he could levy reciprocal tariffs “as early as today” on Canada, citing Canadian tariffs on US dairy and lumber exports.
On Thursday, the president signed executive actions that delay tariffs for nearly one month on all products from Mexico and Canada that are covered by the USMCA free trade treaty, a significant walkback of the administration’s signature economic plan that has rattled markets, businesses and consumers.
But in his Friday remarks, he hinted that he was prepared to expand tariffs on other trading partners if he doesn’t see an adjustment in trade policies.
“This has been very unfair to… our country– from an economic standpoint, from a financial standpoint, and a trade standpoint—we’ve been absolutely ripped off by almost every country in the world,” he said. “You can’t even sell anything into India, it’s almost, it’s almost restrictive, it is restrictive. You know, we do very little business inside. They’ve agreed, by the way, they want to cut their tariffs way down now, because somebody’s finally exposing them for what they’ve done, and same thing with China, same thing with a lot of other countries.”
President Donald Trump addressed the on-again-off-again nature of his tariff strategy and said that more “changes and adjustments” should be expected in the future.
“There’ll always be changes and adjustments,” Trump said, when asked in the Oval Office if he’s done with the suspensions and carveouts.
Describing the one-month pause on auto tariffs on Mexico and Canada as a “little bit” of a “reprieve,” Trump said his goal is to “help companies create jobs” in America.
President Donald Trump said on Friday he believes it will be easier to deal with Moscow than Kyiv in arriving at a final settlement to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, asserting that Russian President Vladimir Putin holds “all the cards.”
Trump said “anyone” in Putin’s position would be bombarding Ukraine given the current battlefield dynamics. And even though Trump said he wanted to help Ukraine, he said Kyiv needed to “get on the ball” and work toward a peace agreement.
“I think we’re doing very well with Russia, but right now they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine. And Ukraine, I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine, and they don’t have the cards,” Trump said in the Oval Office.
Earlier Friday, Trump had threatened new sanctions on Russia as it launches huge strikes across Ukraine. Yet in the Oval Office, Trump still sounded a conciliatory note toward Putin.
“I actually think he’s doing what anybody else would do,” Trump said. “I think he wants to get it stopped and settled.”
“He’s been hitting him. And I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended,” Trump went on.
President Donald Trump said he has not heard anything about the calls to potentially pardon Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of federal crimes related to George Floyd’s 2020 death.
Asked by reporters in the Oval Office on Friday if he is considering pardoning Chauvin, Trump said, “No, I haven’t even heard about it.”
Some context: The comments come after conservative commentator Ben Shapiro called for Trump to pardon Chauvin of his federal conviction. At the end of Tuesday’s episode of his video podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro essentially argued — counter to what a state jury found — that Chauvin wasn’t responsible for Floyd’s death.
The roughly three-minute segment, which Shapiro also posted on X, urges viewers to sign a petition asking Trump to consider a federal pardon.
Elon Musk, the billionaire helping lead Trump’s government efficiency initiatives, later reposted Shapiro’s segment, writing it’s “something to think about.”
CNN’s Chelsea Bailey contributed reporting to this post.
President Donald Trump is speaking in the Oval Office following the release of the first full jobs report under his second administration and a day after he delayed tariffs on many goods from Mexico and Canada.
Employment growth rebounded in February as the US economy added 151,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
It comes as employment data shows federal government jobs shrank by 10,000 amid job cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
It’s also happening as Trump has issued a warning to Russia, threatening new sanctions in response to Moscow’s bombardment of Ukraine — after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, and one week after an Oval Office blowup between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The US is still sharing intelligence with Ukraine that can help its troops defend themselves, but has “scaled back” sharing any intelligence that Ukrainian forces could use for offensive targeting of Russian troops, according to two US defense officials.
The US does not want to be seen as actively helping the Ukraine strike Russia, which is also why military aid deliveries were paused earlier this week, the officials said. But the US is also not going to withhold information that could help Ukraine protect itself, the officials said.
Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink, the main satellite system that the Ukrainians rely on to communicate on the battlefield, is still active, the officials said.
Some context: CNN previously reported that the Trump administration ordered a partial halt to the intelligence the US shares with Ukraine to help the country fight Russia.
National security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe indicated earlier this week that the pause could be short-lived if the president was satisfied that Ukraine was taking steps toward negotiations to end the war.
On Friday, Trump also expressed frustration with Russia for continuing to attack Ukraine while the US is working to broker peace talks between the countries, and he threatened to impose new sanctions if they don’t stop.
New US sanctions would not stop Moscow from achieving its goals in Ukraine, a Russian government spokesperson said Friday, after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose new financial penalties on the country to force a ceasefire.
“The first line of the post is the most important. For many months, the US has been focused on the victory of Ukraine. Now there is recognition of the reality the Ukrainian position on the battlefield is bad,” Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry, told CNN in response to the Friday social media post by Trump, which opens by saying that Moscow is “pounding” Ukraine.
What Trump said: The US president’s Truth Social post earlier today marked a major shift in tone from his recent pro-Moscow statements, especially in the fallout from an Oval Office blowup in which Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The US has since paused intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.
“Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED,” the US president wrote Friday.
Democratic attorneys general from several states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Thursday over the government’s mass layoffs of federal employees — layoffs, the challengers say, that are inflicting economic harm on their states.
Other legal challenges to the administration’s employee termination tactics have had only mixed success, as some judges have concluded that courts should not play a role in what they see as employment disputes. The Democratic attorneys general are arguing in their new case that, beyond the harm the layoffs are causing the employees themselves, the mass terminations are costing their states tax revenue.
The complaint estimates that, for the District of Columbia alone, the administration’s firing of probationary employees will cause “millions of dollars in lost annual income tax revenue.”
The states also argue that, because the administration is allegedly not following the proper procedures for the layoffs, states are having to “scramble and expend additional resources to identify even which agencies have conducted layoffs” so that they can offer unemployment insurance and other required benefits.
“Some Plaintiff States have also lost the benefit of services provided by federal employees embedded within state agencies, without any time to prepare,” the lawsuit said. It was filed in Maryland’s US District Court and has been assigned to Judge James Bredar, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he’s “positively surprised” by the jobs report numbers and there’s been “progress” on fentanyl crossing the border.
He said government workers will “probably have a bigger decline” next month with an increase in manufacturing jobs. Hasset also said he expects leisure jobs to increase as well, as he blamed the flu on travel and leisure numbers.
Trump tariffs: When discussing Trump’s back and forth on tariffs, Hassett said there’s been progress on fentanyl and called it an “ongoing negotiation.”
“President Trump has adjusted the parameters over time as he’s seen progress because we need to have some progress. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying of fentanyl, and we’ve seen the Canadians and the Mexicans crack down in a good way,” he said.
Hassett said, “We’ve seen progress like they’re sending criminals here. They’re cracking down on cartels. We’ve seen pictures of facilities that are being shut down, and so President Trump has been impressed by some of the progress, not like obviously, in the end what’s going to matter is are there fewer deaths from fentanyl in America. That’s the thing we’re going to care the most about.”
The State Department is moving to close nearly a dozen consulates around the world, according to a source familiar with the matter and a congressional aide.
The moves come as the agency eyes broader organizational changes and significant reductions in its workforce both domestically and abroad. The Trump administration, spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, has taken drastic steps to shrink the federal workforce.
As outposts of US diplomatic missions, consulates provide services like visa processing and other services for American citizens in need. They also serve to collect information to send back to Washington, DC, from areas away from nations’ capitals. Officials say they are an important diplomatic tool as the US looks to counter nations like China. Most consulates do not have a large workforce.
A memo was circulated within the State Department identifying a number of consulates the agency was looking to shutter, mostly in Western Europe, one source said. According to a congressional aide, the State Department informed Capitol Hill last month that it was looking to close ten outposts – Leipzig, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon and Strasbourg in France, Ponta Delgado in Portugal and Belo Horizonte in Brazil.
On Monday, the State Department said it was moving forward with the closure of the consulate in Gaziantep, Turkey, a base for humanitarian work with Syria.
A State Department spokesperson, asked about the closures, said the agency “continues to assess our global posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people.”
A federal judge is denying an attempt by federal workers’ unions to lock down potentially private personal information from the Department of Government Efficiency’s work in the Treasury Department.
The major ruling Friday came from the Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the DC District Court, who previously grilled Trump administration lawyers about Elon Musk’s role in DOGE and who may be directing DOGE staffers’ efforts within the Treasury Department.
Kollar-Kotelly said, however, that the workers’ unions hadn’t presented enough evidence to clear the high bar needed for emergency relief. She denied their request for a preliminary injunction over DOGE and the Treasury Department’s access to sensitive banking information in its payments systems.
The judge noted that the Treasury Department has taken steps to monitor and control DOGE’s access to a highly protected payment system used for sending out payments on trillions of dollars of bills across the federal government.
The department has also told the court it is limiting risk that sensitive information could be disclosed outside of government.
Some context: The case is one of several that have challenged DOGE’s access to data and personal information in various federal agencies under privacy laws.
The cases are largely not yet clearing the bar for judges to block DOGE’s access indefinitely, but the court fights are continuing as defendants try to gather more evidence about what DOGE is doing and Musk’s role in the staffers’ work.
President Donald Trump on Friday threatened new sanctions on Russia, including on its banking sector, in response to Moscow’s continued bombardment of Ukraine — a significant warning as he seeks to end the conflict.
The new threat was notable after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, including saying he was open to lifting sanctions.
Now, Trump says he could slap new, tougher sanctions on Russia in his bid to end the war.
“To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!” he went on.
It comes one week following an Oval Office blowup among Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance, which resulted in Zelensky being told to leave the White House. The US has since paused intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.
On the battlefield: Russian forces launched a deadly aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, targeting energy facilities across the country, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.
The missile and drone strikes killed at least two people and injured seven others in the southern Kherson region, officials said. Two people were wounded in the central Poltava region.
Damage to residential buildings and energy facilities was reported in several regions, including Kharkiv in the east, Odesa in the south and Ternopil in western Ukraine.
The attacks damaged natural gas production facilities, Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas firm Naftogaz said in a statement.
Naftogaz said Friday’s strikes were the 17th combined missile and drone attack on its facilities — the latest barrage in near-daily aerial attacks aimed at weakening Ukrainian defenses and degrading the country’s energy infrastructure during the harsh winter months.
CNN’s Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed reporting to this post.
President Donald Trump’s effort to cut federal government spending by eliminating jobs as part of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency drove federal employment lower last month, declining by 10,000 jobs. That represents the worst month of federal government hiring since June 2022.
Of those 10,000 cuts, 3,500 were postal workers. Musk has been advocating for privatizing the US Postal Service, saying earlier this week “we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”
Federal government cuts are likely to continue to weigh on future employment reports as DOGE looks to cut the headcounts at more government agencies.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging his country to reach a nuclear deal with the US, telling Fox Business in an interview that he believes he can negotiate an agreement “that would be just as good as if you won militarily.”
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and ordered a US-led strike with Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, drawing the ire of Tehran.
The president has previously said he wants to enter talks for a new deal with Iran, but the message from Iran has been mixed, with Khamenei saying last month that talks with the United States were “not smart.”
Earlier this week, during a meeting with US officials in Saudi Arabia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia has offered to participate in nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
In the first full jobs report under President Donald Trump’s second administration, employment growth rebounded in February as the US economy added 151,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
The unemployment rate edged up to 4.1% from 4% the month before.
February’s report marks another solid month of job gains and a continuation of a historic expansion of the labor market.
Whether that continues, however, remains to be seen. Recent economic data has shown that uncertainty and layoffs are on the rise amid some monumental policy shifts from the Trump administration.
Economists were expecting that job growth would pick up at a 160,000 net gain.
President Donald Trump will deliver remarks today at the White House digital assets summit in the State Dining Room, according to a White House news release.
Ahead of the first-ever White House crypto summit, Trump established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order on Thursday.
The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order.
“Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency,” the order said. “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.”
The order also created a US Digital Asset Stockpile under the Treasury Department to manage other coins and assets. On Sunday, Trump posted on social media that he would direct the government to stockpile bitcoin, ethereum and three other tokens, which prompted backlash from the crypto industry.
The Trump administration continued its efforts to reshape the federal government Thursday with new guidance from the Social Security Administration telling employees they cannot access “general news” websites from their work-issued devices effective immediately.
According to a memo obtained by CNN, employees are also prohibited from accessing sports websites and from online shopping. Any exceptions will have to be approved by the employee’s supervisor.
“These additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems,” the agency wrote in the memo.
