The Latest: Trump flexes authority, targeting DEI staffers and pardoning Jan. 6 rioters
Donald Trump is remaking the traditional boundaries of Washington, unleashing unprecedented executive orders and daring anyone to stop him.
Here’s the latest:
Congressional Black Caucus chair says DEI executive order is ‘an attempt to take our country backward’
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette D. Clarke said President Donald Trump promised to try to lower costs and improve the economy for all communities.
“Instead of working to create economic opportunities that will allow Americans to get ahead, build generational wealth and achieve the American dream, President Trump on day one of his administration signed an executive order to systematically dismantle all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the federal government,” she said in a statement.
Clarke added that MAGA Republicans had set their sights on “cutting off access to economic opportunity for Black and minority communities in the federal government, on college campuses and in corporate America” since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision that said race could not be a factor in college admissions.
She called the executive order “nothing short of an attempt to take our country backward.”
Trump to speak at House GOP retreat
Trump is heading back to Florida next week to speak at a private retreat for House Republicans.
Republicans are gathering for their annual conference retreat in Doral where Trump has a resort.
House Speaker Mike Johnson says Trump will come to speak to the lawmakers as they plan priorities on taxes, spending cuts and others.
House Speaker Mike Johnson stands by Trump’s decision on Jan. 6 pardons
Trump pardoned and commuted the sentences of some 1,500 people in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol siege.
“The president’s made his decision — I don’t second guess those,” Johnson said at a Wednesday news conference.
Democratic senator says new allegations against the defense secretary nominee should be disqualifying
Rhode Island Democrat Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said new allegations of drunkenness and potential violent behavior by Trump Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth toward his second wife Samantha Hegseth should be disqualifying. And he called into question the thoroughness of the FBI’s background check into Hegseth’s past.
The allegations — including one that Hegseth was drunk in public in uniform at a Minneapolis strip club during a former drill weekend — were part of a signed affidavit by Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, Danielle Hegseth, that detailed many encounters she said she had with the nominee that left her deeply concerned.
Those also included that Samantha Hegseth had a “safe word” she communicated in 2015 or 2016 to Danielle Hegseth that indicated she needed help to get away from her husband. Hegseth’s full Senate confirmation vote could come in a matter of days.
Hegseth, through his attorney, has denied the allegations.
The Trump administration cancels travel for refugees already cleared to resettle in the US
Refugees who had been approved to travel to the United States before a Jan. 27 deadline suspending America’s refugee resettlement program have had their travel plans canceled by the Trump administration.
Thousands of refugees are now stranded at various locations around the globe.
The suspension was in an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Monday. It left open the possibility that people who had undergone the lengthy process to be approved as refugees and permitted to come to the U.S., and had flights booked before that deadline, might still be able to get in under the wire.
But in an email reviewed Wednesday by The Associated Press, the U.S. agency overseeing refugee processing and arrival told staff and stakeholders that “refugee arrival to the United States have been suspended until further notice.”
▶ Read more about the refugee resettlement program
Trump administration shuts down White House Spanish-language page and social media
Within hours of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the new administration took down the Spanish-language version of the official White House website.
The site — currently https://www.whitehouse.gov/es/ — now gives users an “Error 404” message. It also included a “Go Home” button that directed viewers to a page featuring a video montage of Trump in his first term and on the campaign trail. The button was later updated to read “Go To Home Page”.
Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion at the abrupt change and frustration at what some called the administration’s lack of efforts to maintain communication with the Latino community, which helped propel him to the presidency.
The Spanish profile of the White House’s X account, @LaCasaBlanca, and the government page on reproductive freedom also were disbanded.
▶ Read more about the White House Spanish-language page
Roughly half of Americans lack confidence in the criminal justice system
That wobbly faith in the criminal justice system under Trump’s watch appears to mirror the American public’s perspective.
About half of Americans are “not very” or “not at all” confident that the Justice Department, the FBI or the Supreme Court will act in a fair and nonpartisan manner during Trump’s second term. In each instance, roughly 3 in 10 are “somewhat” confident and about 2 in 10 are “extremely” or “very” confident, according to an AP-NORC poll from January.
Pardons by Trump and Biden reveal distrust of each other and wobbly faith in the criminal justice system
A day that began with the outgoing president’s pardon of lawmakers and his own family ended with the incoming president’s pardon of supporters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol four years ago.
The clemency grants by Biden and Trump are vastly different in scope, impact and their meaning for the rule of law.
But the remarkable flex of executive authority in a 12-hour span also shows the men’s deeply rooted suspicion of one another, with both signaling to their supporters that the tall pillars of the criminal justice system — facts, evidence and law — could not be trusted as foundational principles in each other’s administrations.
Trump’s pick for budget director has another confirmation hearing Wednesday
Russell Vought, nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget, is scheduled for a hearing before the Budget Committee at 10 a.m. ET.
Vought was OMB director during Trump’s first term. He already had a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that the Republican nominee tried to distance himself from during the campaign. The budget director oversees the building of the president’s budget and reviews proposed regulations.
Panama’s president repeats his opposition to Trump’s desire to put Panama Canal under US control
“The Panama Canal belongs to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama. The Panama Canal is not a concession or a gift from the United States,” José Raul Mulino said Wednesday while appearing on a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The Panama Canal came into being in 1914, following a bilateral treaty in 1903. At the dawn of our independence with Colombia.”
Trump falsely claimed during his inaugural address that China runs the canal, a critical trade route. He said the U.S. “gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”
Mulino said Trump’s “misinformed” remarks don’t worry him because “that in strict law is an impossibility.”
“Panama is not distracted by this type of pronouncements,” he said.
Justice Department directs prosecutors to probe local efforts to obstruct immigration enforcement
The Justice Department is directing its federal prosecutors to investigate any state or local officials who stand in the way of beefed-up enforcement of immigration laws under the Trump administration, according to a memo to the entire workforce obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Written by Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, the memo also says the department will return to the principle of charging defendants with the most serious crime it can prove, a staple position of Republican-led departments meant to remove a prosecutor’s discretion to charge a lower-level offense.
Much of the memo is centered on immigration enforcement. Bove wrote that prosecutors shall “take all steps necessary to protect the public and secure the American border by removing illegal aliens from the country and prosecuting illegal aliens for crimes” committed in U.S. jurisdiction.
▶ Read more about the Justice Department and immigration enforcement
Trump demands an apology from bishop at the inaugural prayer service
The Right Rev. Mariann Budde asked President Trump during her sermon Tuesday to have mercy on the LGBTQ+ community and migrants here illegally. Trump has promised mass deportations of undocumented migrants. And he’s signed an executive order recognizing only two sexes, male and female.
In an angry overnight post on his social media site, Trump sharply criticized Budde as a “so-called Bishop” who’s a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” Trump said she was “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.” He said she and her church “owe the public an apology.
US adults want border security action but mostly oppose arrests in schools, churches: AP-NORC poll
Many U.S. adults are on board with the idea of beefing up security at the southern border and undertaking some targeted deportations, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. But findings also suggest his actions may quickly push the country beyond its limited consensus on the issue.
Half of U.S. adults think increasing security at the border should be a high priority for the federal government, according to the poll, and about 3 in 10 say it should be a moderate priority. Just 2 in 10, roughly, consider it a low priority.
Donald Trump finds new ways to wield presidential power
President Donald Trump is swiftly breaching the traditional boundaries of presidential power, bringing to bear a lifetime of bending the limits in courthouses, boardrooms and politics to forge an expansive view of his authority.
He’s already unleashed an unprecedented wave of executive orders, with actions intended to clamp down on border crossings, limit the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and keep the popular Chinese-owned TikTok operational despite a law shutting down the social media platform.
Trump is drafting a new blueprint for the presidency, one that demonstrates the primacy of blunt force in a democratic system predicated on checks and balances between the branches of government.
▶ Read more about Trump’s first days in office
By The Associated Press
