Trump moves with dizzying speed on his to-do list. But there are warning signs in his first month

Trump moves with dizzying speed on his to-do list. But there are warning signs in his first month
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, en route to West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP)
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Updated 16 February 2025
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Trump moves with dizzying speed on his to-do list. But there are warning signs in his first month

Trump moves with dizzying speed on his to-do list. But there are warning signs in his first month
  • While Trump promised to turn Washington upside down, his moves could have far-reaching implications for thousands of federal employees around the country

WASHINGTON: As President Donald Trump approaches the first-month mark in his second term, he has moved with dizzying speed and blunt force to reorder American social and political norms and the economy while redefining the US role in the world.
At the same time, he has empowered Elon Musk, an unelected, South African-born billionaire, to help engineer the firing of thousands of federal employees and potentially shutter entire agencies created by Congress.
Those efforts have largely overshadowed Trump’s crackdowns on immigration and the US-Mexico border, and his efforts to remake social policy by wiping out diversity, equity and inclusion programs and rolling back transgender rights.
The president has also imposed scores of new tariffs against US trade partners and threatened more, even as economists warn that will pass costs on to US consumers and feed inflation.
Here’s a look at the first four weeks:
Mass federal firings begin
The Trump administration fired thousands of workers who were still in probationary periods common among new hires. Some had less than an hour to leave their offices.
Those potentially losing jobs include medical scientists, energy infrastructure specialists, foreign service employees, FBI agents, prosecutors, educational and farming data experts, overseas aid workers and even human resources personnel who would otherwise have to manage the dismissals.
At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created to protect the public after the 2008 financial crisis, employees say the administration not only wants to cut nearly the entire workforce but also erase all its data from the past 12 years. The administration agreed to pause any further dismantling of the agency until March 3, under a judge’s order.
While Trump promised to turn Washington upside down, his moves could have far-reaching implications for thousands of federal employees around the country and drive up the unemployment rate if large numbers of layoffs happen at once.
Legal challenges mount
Court challenges to Trump’s policies started on Inauguration Day and have continued at a furious pace since Jan. 20. The administration is facing some 70 lawsuits nationwide challenging his executive orders and moves to downsize the federal government.
The Republican-controlled Congress is putting up little resistance, so the court system is ground zero for pushback. Judges have issued more than a dozen orders at least temporarily blocking aspects of Trump’s agenda, ranging from an executive order to end US citizenship extended automatically to people born in this country to giving Musk’s team access to sensitive federal data.
While many of those judges were nominated by Democratic presidents, Trump has gotten unfavorable rulings from judges picked by Republican presidents, too. Trump suggested he could target the judiciary, saying, “Maybe we have to look at the judges.” The administration has said in the meantime that it will appeal, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt railed against the orders slowing the president’s agenda, calling each “an abuse of the rule of law.”
The administration has notched a few wins, too, most significantly when a judge allowed it to move forward with a deferred resignation program spearheaded by Musk.
The economic outlook worsens
Amid the policy upheaval, the latest economic data could prompt some White House worries.
Inflation rose at a monthly rate of 0.5 percent in January, according to the Labor Department. Over the past three months, the consumer price index has increased at an annual rate of 4.5 percent — a sign that inflation is heating up again after having cooled for much of 2024.
Trump told voters he could lower inflation, and do so almost immediately after taking office. But Leavitt, while blaming Trump’s predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, acknowledged the latest inflation indicators were “worse than expected.”
More trouble signs came when the Commerce Department reported that retail sales slumped 0.9 percent on a monthly basis in January. A drop that large could signal a weakening in consumer confidence and economic growth.
The Federal Reserve’s report on industrial production also found that factory output slipped 0.1 percent in January, largely due to a 5.2 percent drop in the making of motor vehicles and parts.
These could all be blips, which means the monthly data in February will really matter.
The ‘fair trade’ Trump wants isn’t necessarily fair
After previously imposing tariffs on China and readying import taxes on Canada and Mexico, Trump rolled out what he called the “big one.” He said his administration would put together new tariffs in the coming weeks and months to match what other countries charge.
Other nations hardly find Trump’s approach fair.
From their vantage point, he is including items other than tariffs such as value added taxes, which are akin to sales taxes. That means the rates could be much higher than a standard tariff in Europe.
On top of that, Trump plans separate additional tariffs on autos, computer chips and pharmaceuticals, in addition to the 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum that he announced on Monday.
It is not clear whether these trade penalties are mainly negotiating tools or ways for Trump to raise revenues. So far, he has suggested that they are both.
Congress watches its authority erode. But there are signs of pushback
Congress finds itself confounded by the onslaught as its institutional power — as the Constitution’s first branch of government with its unmatched authority over federal spending — is being eroded in real time.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said he finds the work of Musk’s team “very exciting.” Johnson said Trump is “taking legitimate executive action.”
But even among congressional Republicans there were small signs of protest emerging — letters being written and phone calls being made — to protect their home-state interests and constituents as funding for programs, services and government contracts is being dismantled.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., urged the Homeland Security Department not to issue blanket deportations for Venezuelan migrants who fled their country and now call the Miami-area home. “I’m not powerless. I’m a member of Congress,” he said.
Democratic lawmakers have joined protesters outside shuttered federal offices, arguing Trump and Musk had gone too far. Democrats suggested legislation to protect various programs, and even filed articles of impeachment against the president over his plans to bulldoze and redevelop Gaza.
Trump wants a new world order
With his phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin this past week, Trump is hoping he initiated the beginning of the end of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
The leaders agreed to have their teams “start negotiations immediately.” After getting off the phone with Putin, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss getting both sides to the negotiating table.
The Putin call is a monumental development in a war that has left hundreds of thousands dead or seriously wounded.
But the way ahead remains complicated.
Zelensky said he will not meet with Putin until a plan for peace is hammered out by Trump. Trump has gotten blowback when European leaders sharply criticized him and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for suggesting that NATO membership was not in the cards for Ukraine.
The White House faces a further quandary with Zelensky wanting the US and other countries to provide security guarantees for Ukraine, and Zelensky insisting that he and Trump iron out an agreement on the contours of any peace deal.


China’s Xi declines EU invitation to anniversary summit, FT reports

China’s Xi declines EU invitation to anniversary summit, FT reports
Updated 16 March 2025
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China’s Xi declines EU invitation to anniversary summit, FT reports

China’s Xi declines EU invitation to anniversary summit, FT reports
  • Beijing told EU officials that Premier Li Qiang would meet the presidents of the European Council and Commission instead of Xi

Chinese President Xi Jinping has declined an invitation to visit Brussels for a summit to mark the 50th anniversary of EU-China diplomatic ties, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Beijing told EU officials that Premier Li Qiang would meet the presidents of the European Council and Commission instead of Xi, the FT said, citing two people familiar with the matter whom it did not identify.
The Chinese premier usually attends the summit when it is held in Brussels, while the president hosts it in Beijing, but the EU wants Xi to attend to commemorate half a century of relations between Beijing and the bloc, the newspaper said.
Tensions between Brussels and Beijing have grown since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the EU accusing China of backing the Kremlin, the FT said. Last year, the European Union also imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports.
China’s Foreign Ministry and the EU did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
“Informal discussions are ongoing, both about setting the date for the EU-China summit this year and the level of representation,” an EU official told the newspaper, while the Chinese ministry was quoted as saying it did not have any information to provide on the matter.
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and the EU, its third-largest, spent most of 2024 exchanging barbs over allegations of overcapacity, illegal subsidies and dumping in each other’s markets.
In October, the EU imposed double-digit tariffs on China-made electric vehicles after an anti-subsidy investigation, in addition to its standard car import duty of 10 percent. The move drew loud protests from Beijing, which in return, raised market entry barriers for certain EU products such as brandy.


Tornadoes strike US South, killing 33 people amid rising risk

Tornadoes strike US South, killing 33 people amid rising risk
Updated 16 March 2025
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Tornadoes strike US South, killing 33 people amid rising risk

Tornadoes strike US South, killing 33 people amid rising risk
  • Twenty-six tornadoes were reported but not confirmed to have touched down late on Friday night and early on Saturday

ATLANTA: Tornadoes killed at least 33 people across several states in the US Midwest and Southeast on Saturday night, CNN reported.
Missouri reported 12 fatalities spanning five counties, the state’s highway patrol posted on X.
Robbie Myers, the director of emergency management in Missouri’s Butler County, told reporters that more than 500 homes, a church and grocery store in the county were destroyed. A mobile home park had been “totally destroyed,” he said. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves posted on X that six deaths had been reported in the state – one in Covington County, two in Jeff Davis County and three in Walthall County.
According to preliminary assessments, 29 people were injured statewide and 21 counties sustained storm damage, Reeves said.
In Arkansas, three deaths occurred, the state’s Department of Emergency Management said, adding that there were 32 injuries.
Twenty-six tornadoes were reported but not confirmed to have touched down late on Friday night and early on Saturday as a low-pressure system drove powerful thunderstorms across parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri, said David Roth, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.


NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station

NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station
Updated 16 March 2025
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NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station

NASA’s stuck astronauts welcome their newly arrived replacements to the space station
  • The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift

CAPE CANAVERAL: Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the US, Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and then rang the ship’s bell as the new arrivals floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes.
“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Williams told Mission Control.
Wilmore’s and Williams’ ride arrived back in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida’s coast.
Until then, there will be 11 aboard the orbiting lab, representing the US, Russia and Japan.


Trump ‘silences’ Voice of America and other US-funded networks, including Urdu service

Trump ‘silences’ Voice of America and other US-funded networks, including Urdu service
Updated 16 March 2025
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Trump ‘silences’ Voice of America and other US-funded networks, including Urdu service

Trump ‘silences’ Voice of America and other US-funded networks, including Urdu service
  • VOA director Michael Abramowitz says he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave this week
  • US media outlets were seen as critical to countering Russian, Chinese information offensives

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday put journalists at Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly freezing decades-old outlets long seen as critical to countering Russian and Chinese information offensives.

Hundreds of staffers at VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received a weekend email saying they will be barred from their offices and should surrender press passes and office-issued equipment.

Trump, who has already eviscerated the US global aid agency and the Education Department, on Friday issued an executive order listing the US Agency for Global Media as among “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary.”

Kari Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter put in charge of the media agency after she lost a US Senate bid, said in an email to the outlets that federal grant money “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”

The White House said the cuts would ensure “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” marking a dramatic tone shift toward the networks established to extend US influence overseas.

White House press official Harrison Fields wrote “goodbye” on X in 20 languages, a jab at the outlets’ multilingual coverage.

VOA director Michael Abramowitz said he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave Saturday.

“VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission,” he said on Facebook, noting that its coverage — in 48 languages — reaches 360 million people each week.

“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” Abramowitz said, adding that it has played an important role “in the fight for freedom and democracy around the world.”

The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which started broadcasting into the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the cancelation of funding “a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
“The Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years,” its president, Stephen Capus, said in a statement.

US-funded media have reoriented themselves since the end of the Cold War, dropping much of the programming geared toward newly democratic Central and Eastern European countries and focusing on Russia and China.

Chinese state-funded media have expanded their reach sharply over the past decade, including by offering free services to outlets in the developing world that would otherwise pay for Western news agencies.

Radio Free Asia, established in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reporting into countries without free media including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.

The outlets have an editorial firewall, with a stated guarantee of independence despite government funding.

The policy has angered some around Trump, who has long railed against media and suggested that government-funded outlets should promote his policies.

The move to end US-funded media is likely to meet challenges, much like Trump’s other sweeping cuts. Congress, not the president, has the constitutional power of the purse and Radio Free Asia in particular has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.

Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the decision, saying it “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting the free flow of information.”

Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and senior Democratic congresswoman Lois Frankel said in a joint statement that Trump’s move would “cause lasting damage to US efforts to counter propaganda around the world.”

One VOA employee, who requested anonymity, described Saturday’s message as another “perfect example of the chaos and unprepared nature of the process,” with VOA staffers presuming that scheduled programming is off but not told so directly.

A Radio Free Asia employee said: “It’s not just about losing your income. We have staff and contractors who fear for their safety. We have reporters who work under the radar in authoritarian countries in Asia. We have staff in the US who fear deportation if their work visa is no longer valid.”

“Wiping us out with the strike of a pen is just terrible.”


Russia, Ukraine continue air attacks with ceasefire prospects uncertain

Russia, Ukraine continue air attacks with ceasefire prospects uncertain
Updated 16 March 2025
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Russia, Ukraine continue air attacks with ceasefire prospects uncertain

Russia, Ukraine continue air attacks with ceasefire prospects uncertain
  • Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold

Russia and Ukraine continued aerial attacks on each other, inflicting injuries and damages, officials said early on Sunday, as the fate of a proposed ceasefire to the three-year-old war remained uncertain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he supported in principle Washington’s proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine but that his forces would fight on until several crucial conditions were worked out.
Both sides have since traded heavy aerial strikes, and Russia moved closer on battlefield to ejecting Ukrainian forces from their months-old foothold in the western Russian region of Kursk.
The Russian defense ministry said on Sunday that its air defense units destroyed a total of 31 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.
Of those, 16 were downed over the southwestern region of Voronezh, nine over the territory of the Belgorod region and the rest over the Rostov and Kursk regions, the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
In a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, three people were injured, including a 7-year-old, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said earlier on the Telegram messaging app.
Two of the people were injured after a drone hit their house, sparking a fire in the Gubkinsky district of the region, while the other person was injured in a drone attack on the village of Dolgoye, Gladkov said.
Alexander Gusev, governor of Voronezh, said on Telegram that there was no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The acting governor of the southern Russian region of Rostov said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage reported there either.
In Ukraine, authorities reported several Russian drone strikes, including on the northern region of Chernihiv, where firefighters were battling a blaze at a high-rise building that was sparked by Russian drone attack, Ukraine’s state of emergency service said.
Ukrainian media reported a series of explosions in the region surrounding the capital Kyiv, after Ukraine’s air force issued warnings of a threat of drone attacks on Kyiv and a number of other central Ukrainian regions.
By 0300 GMT on Sunday, there was no official information about damage in the Kyiv region.