Trump signs order to expand IVF access ahead of joint interview with Musk – US politics live
Trump signs order to expand IVF access
As Donald Trump kicks off another afternoon signing executive orders, this time from his Mar-a-Lago home, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says one will protect access to in vitro fertilization.
“The order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” Leavitt wrote on social media.
The order requires the assistant to the president for domestic policy to submit to a list of policy recommendations “on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” to Trump within 90 days, according to a White House press release.
Access to such fertility treatments came under fire last year after Alabama’s largest fertility clinics stopped offering IVF after the state supreme court ruled embryos are “extrauterine children”. The ruling marked a significant victory for anti-abortion activists who’d promoted the language of fetal personhood nationwide.
Key events
The JFK Library Foundation offered this brief statement about the sudden closure of Boston’s John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum this afternoon, my colleague Lauren Gambino reports:
“The sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library forced the museum to close today. As the Foundation that supports the JFK Library, we are devastated by this news and will continue to support our colleagues and the Library.”
The library foundation directed all media queries to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC. The museum’s website currently says that it will reopen on Wednesday.
Planning a trip to a national park this summer? Trump’s government staffing cuts may affect those vacation plans.
The Trump administration has now fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government, the Associated Press reports.
The firings weren’t publicly announced but were confirmed by Democratic senators and House members. They have been a part of a chaotic rollout of an aggressive program to eliminate thousands of federal jobs plan led by Musk and his Doge agency.
Park advocates say the permanent staff cuts will leave hundreds of national parks understaffed and facing tough decisions about operating hours, public safety and resource protection.
For some context on how the Trump administration’s choices could affect some of the United States’ most beloved national parks this summer, you can return to this investigation from the Guardian’s Gabrielle Canon, on what happened at Joshua Tree national park during the last Trump administration:
The John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston abruptly closed Tuesday afternoon, with a sign on its door blaming an “executive order”. But its website later posted it would reopen Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
According to local media reports, staff ushered guests out at about 2 pm. The paper sign taped to the glass doors read: “Due to the executive order, the JFK Library will be closed until further notice.”
It’s unclear what executive order the sign was referring to.
The library’s website ran a red banner across the top announcing the indefinite closure, with no further details. Early Tuesday evening, it changed to read: “The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum will reopen on Wednesday February 19.”
The National Archives and Records Administration, which administers the 16 presidential libraries nationwide, didn’t immediately comment to the Associated Press. The Guardian’s queries about the situation were also not immediately answered.
At a presss conference today, Donald Trump said his administration could soon hit foreign cars with tariffs of around 25%, and added that semiconductor chips and drugs are set to face higher duties.
Asked if he had decided the rate of a threatened tariff on cars from overseas, Trump said he would “probably” announce that on 2 April, “but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25%”.
Regarding threatened tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, Trump said: “It’ll be 25% and higher, and it’ll go very substantially higher over the course of a year.”
Here’s Callum Jones with the full story:
Defense department prepares for layoffs
The Pentagon is preparing a list of probationary employees to turn over to the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency”, with layoffs expected to begin as soon as this week, CNN and the Washington Post report.
Major US military commands, called combatant commands, were asked to submit lists of probationary employees by this afternoon, one official told CNN.
The news comes after Doge officials arrived at the Pentagon Friday, in what appeared to be their first meeting with defense department staff.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk to review spending in the defense department, which maintains a nearly $1tn budget annually. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad,” he said.
Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin told the Associated Press today that he empathizes with federal employees concerned about mass layoffs.
“This workforce, which is talented and deep and experienced, is part of Virginia,” he said. “And so we want to make sure that first, they know that we understand. And second of all, we’re here to help them.”
Virginia is home to many federal workers based out of Washington DC.
Youngkin argued that the media had sensationalized the cuts across the federal workforce.
“This is about this is about stepping back and making sure that tax dollars are being appropriately managed and deployed,” he said.
A federal judge will not immediately block Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” from accessing government data systems.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there was not evidence to justify a temporary restraining order, although she noted serious questions about Musk’s authority.
In a separate case, another federal judge said he’ll decide “sooner rather than later” whether to temporarily block the Trump administration’s mass layoff of federal workers while a lawsuit brought by five unions moves forward.
US district judge Christopher Cooper said the case may depend on whether enough people were terminated to thwart the purposes that Congress had in mind when authorizing agency funding.
Robert F Kennedy Jr began his work as the new head of Health and Human Services today at a welcome ceremony where he called for the agency to “scrutinize” vaccines, antidepressants and radiation emitted by radios, TVs and cellphones.
The former presidential candidate turned Trump ally was confirmed as the US’s senior health official on Thursday, despite having no training in public health.
Over the weekend, thousands of HHS employees were laid off in the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal workforce.
During today’s ceremony, Kennedy called for a close study of vaccination recommendations, and described the new Make American Healthy Again commission, which Donald Trump established to investigate “the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases” including pesticides, microplastics, ultra-processed foods, antidepressants and more.
Public health advocates have expressed concern that Kennedy, who is prone to repeating conspiracy theories, will be unable to sort the scientific evidence to make rigorous recommendations.
Senate Democrats have written a letter urging the Trump administration to halt mass layoffs and lift a hiring freeze at the Internal Revenue Service ahead of tax season.
With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the IRS identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, as we reported earlier today. That amounts to about 9% of the agency’s workforce.
The nine senators who signed the letter, led by Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS needs to be fully staffed in order to process returns, send refunds and answer questions during tax season. They requested a response from the administration by 27 February.
Trump on Musk: ‘Call him whatever you want’
Furthering the confusion surrounding Elon Musk’s role at the so-called “department of government efficiency”, Donald Trump says “call him whatever you want”.
“Elon is, to me, a patriot,” Trump said. “You can call him an employee, you can call him a consultant, you can call him whatever you want, but he’s a patriot.”
Trump’s statement came just hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the tech billionaire is not in charge of Doge, while declining to state who was.
Trump and Leavitt’s statements come after a White House court filing on Monday that said the world’s richest man has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions”.
Trump says ‘half-baked negotiator’ could have ended Ukraine war
Responding to Ukraine’s frustration at being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Saudia Arabia today, Donald Trump told reporters the country had an opportunity to join talks for the previous three years.
“A half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives,” Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago home. He added that he could have prevented the Russian invasion.
At his Mar-a-Lago executive order signing ceremony today, Trump has signed two more orders.
The first “reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is”, an aide tells the Associated Press. The order comes as members of the Trump administration have considered disregarding judicial orders.
The second, a presidential memorandum, requires federal agencies to report waste, fraud and abuse that’s uncovered and details of programs that are eliminated. An aide described it as “imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies”.
