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Department of Education braced amid reports of imminent Trump order to close it – US politics live

Department of Education braces amid reports of imminent closure order

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next few hours.

We start with the news that president Donald Trump is expected this week to direct the secretary of education to dissolve the US Department of Education by executive order, according to reports.

ABC News reports that sources familiar with a draft of the executive order say it instructs Linda McMahon to close the department by taking all the available steps “permitted by law”.

McMahon herself has previously suggested it would require congressional approval to shutter the department, which has over 4,000 employees and an annual budget of about $240bn.

ABC News reports the draft order says “The federal bureaucratic hold on education must end. The department of education’s main functions can, and should, be returned to the states.”

The order is then reported to describe the agency as an “experiment of controlling American education through Federal programs and dollars.”

Education has been a cabinet level department in the federal government since the 1860s, with the department taking its present form in 1980 after a reorganisation by the late president Jimmy Carter.

Trump’s order is expected to say that this has “failed our children, our teachers, and our families”. McMahon is a former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment.

In other developments:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that Republicans cannot meet their own budget target to pass Trump’s legislative priorities without imposing cuts on Medicare or Medicaid
Hundreds of diplomats at the state department and US Agency for International Development USAid have written to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, protesting against the dismantling of USAid, saying it undermines US leadership and security and leaves power vacuums for China and Russia to fill
The supreme court has upheld a federal judge’s order that USAid disburse $1.5b in payments to its partners, a setback in the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the agency
US president Donald Trump has temporarily spared carmakers from sweeping US tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, one day after an economic strike on the US’s two biggest trading partners sparked warnings of widespread price increases and disruption
An independent federal board has ordered the US Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate nearly 6,000 employees who were fired as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce
A congressional hearing designed to criticize sanctuary city policies unexpectedly shifted yesterday, as a planned attack by Republican lawmakers instead dissolved into a platform that amplified Democratic mayors’ arguments about immigration and urban safety
Trump has posted a fresh ultimatum to Hamas, bypassing the Israeli-Hamas negotiating teams, demanding the release of all hostages held in Gaza. The White House confirmed that the US is in direct negotiations with Hamas for the first time since the group was formed, despite it being a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997
Senate Democrats introduced a series of resolutions condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and daring Republicans to object. Republicans did object

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European Union leaders are holding emergency talks today on ways to quickly increase their military budgets after the Trump administration signaled that Europe must take care of its own security and also suspended assistance to Ukraine.

In just over a month, president Donald Trump has overturned old certainties about US reliability as a security partner, as he embraces Russia and withdraws American support for Ukraine, AP reported.

On Monday, Trump ordered a pause to US military supplies to Ukraine as he sought to press president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to engage in negotiations to end the war with Russia, bringing fresh urgency to the EU summit in Brussels.

To follow the summit, see our Europe live blog here.

Hundreds of diplomats at the state department and US Agency for International Development have written to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, protesting against the dismantling of USAid, saying it undermines US leadership and security and leaves power vacuums for China and Russia to fill.

In a cable expected to be filed with the department’s internal “dissent channel”, which allows diplomats to raise concerns about policy anonymously, the diplomats said the Trump administration’s 20 January freeze on almost all foreign aid also endangers American diplomats and forces overseas while putting at risk the lives of millions abroad that depend on US assistance.

More than 700 people have signed on to the letter, a US official speaking on the condition of anonymity said.

“The decision to freeze and terminate foreign aid contracts and assistance awards without any meaningful review jeopardizes our partnerships with key allies, erodes trust, and creates openings for adversaries to expand their influence,” said the cable, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.

The Republican president, pursuing what he has called an “America first” agenda, ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid on his 20 January return to office. The order halted USAid operations around the world, jeopardizing delivery of life-saving food and medical aid, and throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos.

Action to curb global warming is at risk from a “triple negative” effect triggered by the return of US president Donald Trump to the White House, Brazil said on Thursday, as it prepares to host UN climate talks later this year.

Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, launched a trade war with Canada, China and Mexico, and upended US policy on the war in Ukraine.

Brazil’s environment and climate change minister Marina Silva told reporters in Delhi, speaking through a translator, the “increasingly complex geopolitical context”, characterised by turmoil and trade tariffs, risked disrupting progress on curbing climate change.

“They may drain resources, and they also may hamper the environment of confidence and trust among parties. We have a triple negative effect because the less action we see, the less money we see, resulting in less cooperation across countries,” Silva said.

Dharna Noor

The Republican party’s seizure of the Senate and House of Representatives has ended a congressional investigation into big oil just when it is needed most, according to the leader of the inquiry.

“The fossil fuel industry is running perhaps the biggest campaign of disinformation and political interference in American history and they’re backing it up with immense amounts of political spending,” said the Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “The consequences in the White House are enormous and having a huge effect … but people aren’t aware.”

Fossil fuel interests poured a historic $96m into the re-election campaign of Donald Trump and affiliated political action committees in 2023 and 2024, and spent another $243m lobbying Congress. During his first weeks in office, Trump rolled out a spate of pro-fossil fuel policies, while congressional Republicans attacked regulations on the oil and gas industry.

It’s the kind of potential industry influence that demands more scrutiny on Capitol Hill but is unlikely to receive it anytime soon, Whitehouse said.

Until Republicans took control of the Senate in January, the Democratic senator chaired the budget committee, devoting more than a dozen hearings over two years to the climate crisis. Under his leadership, the committee also helmed an investigation into the oil and gas industry’s history of disinformation alongside the House oversight committee, which launched the inquiry in 2021.

Congressional Budget Office says Republicans can't meet budget without cutting Medicare or Medicaid

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has said that Republicans cannot meet their own budget target to pass Donald Trump’s legislative priorities without imposing cuts on Medicare or Medicaid.

The House Republican budget blueprint envisions the House Energy and Commerce Committee will cut spending by $880bn, however, when its spending on Medicare and Medicaid are excluded from its spend, it only has $581bn of expenditure with which to make the savings.

Rep Frank Pollone of New Jersey is quoted by NBC News saying:

This letter from CBO confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the math doesn’t work without devastating Medicaid cuts. Republicans know their spin is a lie, and the truth is they have no problem taking health care away from millions of Americans so that the rich can get richer.

Police in New York have cleared a pro-Palestinian protest by students at Barnard College’s library after a fake bomb threat.

The New York police department said the threat was reported at the upper Manhattan college’s Milstein Center, which serves as the hub for academic life on campus. The department said anyone refusing to leave during the evacuation would be subject to arrest.

Barnard’s president denounced the protest, Associated Press reports. Student organizers say they launched the protest in response to the expulsions of student activists and other recent actions taken by school officials.

NYPD clearing pro-Palestinian demonstrators from the Barnard College on Wednesday night.

In a separate development, Columbia University is reported to have launched a flurry of investigations, led by a new disciplinary committee to identify students who have expressed criticism of Israel.

In a chilling infringement on the right to protest and free speech, in recent weeks it has sent notices to dozens of students for activities ranging from sharing social media posts in support of Palestinian people to joining so-called “unauthorized” protests. One student activist is under investigation for putting up stickers off campus, another faces sanction for co-hosting an art exhibition off campus that focused on last spring’s occupation of a campus building.

Columbia University senior Maryam Alwan has been accused of harassment, having wirtten an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for divestment from Israel. “It just felt so dystopian to have something go through rigorous edits, only to be labeled discriminatory because it’s about Palestine,” said Alwan, a Palestinian-American comparative studies major. “It made me not want to write or say anything on the subject anymore.”

Associated Press reports that Jewish students are among those under investigation for criticizing Israel.