Ruling blocks Trump’s mass firings at agencies; RFK Jr fails to address measles outbreak – US politics live

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Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to arrive at the White House at around 11am ET in the Washington, with a joint press conference with Donald Trump to follow about two hours later, so 1pm ET.

But as my colleague Jakub Krupa helpfully reminds us, these timings can and usually do change as talks take more time than expected.

He adds: “Given the tensions between the two leaders, there will be more temptation than usual to read into any delays, too…”

I will be bringing you the key takeaways from Zelenskyy’s visit throughout the day, but you can follow all the developments on the Europe blog here:

The Trump administration has set its government-shrinking sights on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Assocation (Noaa), the US’s preeminent climate research agency, where around 800 employees have been tapped for termination, two sources close to the agency have told ABC7 NewYork.

More layoff are possible today, one of the sources said, potentially costing the agency more than a thousand employees by the end of the week.

Employees began receiving termination notices on Thursday, learning via email that their jobs would be cut off by the end of the day. The firings specifically affected probationary employees, a categorization that applies to new hires or those moved or promoted into new positions, and which makes up roughly 10% of the agency’s workforce.

The Noaa conducts climate and weather modeling and forecasts for the country, as its National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center provide information that helps communities plan for natural disasters and climate change-driven events. These cuts come days before a potential severe weather outbreak in the southeastern US and just a few months ahead of the next Atlantic hurricane season.

It is not only laid-off employees who will be harmed by the cuts, one worker said yesterday. Ordinary Americans who rely on Noaa’s extreme weather forecasts, climate data and sustainably monitored fisheries will also suffer. They said:

Words can’t describe the impact this will have, both on us at Noaa and on the country. It’s just wrong all around.

Andrew Rosenberg, former deputy director of Noaa’s National Marine Fisheries Service, said Thursday was a “sad day”.

There is no plan or thought into how to continue to deliver science or service on weather, severe storms and events, conservation and management of our coasts and ocean life and much more.

Let’s not pretend this is about efficiency, quality of work or cost savings because none of those false justifications are remotely true.

Olivia Bowden

Tucked away in a former garage space in Toronto’s west end, Gram’s Pizza, is usually packed with diners hankering for anything from a classic pepperoni to vodka and hot hawaiian.

Lately, however, owner and chef Graham Palmateer has made some changes to how he makes his pizzas.

After Donald Trump threatened to slap a 25% tariff on Canadian goods – and even to annex the whole country – Palmateer decided to banish US ingredients from his restaurant.

“I just decided I was done with the US. I wanted to move away from American companies,” he said. “Canadians know Americans pretty well, and we don’t always agree with the choices that they make. A lot of us are disappointed, to put it mildly.”

Making the switch has not been the easiest task: the two countries’ economies have been tightly bound through a longstanding free trade agreement since the late 1980s.

But years of cross-border trade and investment has blurred the lines on country of origin: in the car manufacturing industry, for example, a vehicle passes the border an average of seven times during the manufacturing process.

Read the full report here:

US aid cuts have forced the UN children’s agency Unicef to suspend or scale back many programmes in Lebanon, with more than half of children under the age of two experiencing severe food poverty in the country’s east, a Unicef official said on Friday.

“We have been forced to suspend or cut back or drastically reduce many of our programmes and that includes nutrition programmes,” Unicef’s deputy representative in Lebanon, Ettie Higgins, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Beirut, Reuters reports.

US shutdown of HIV/Aids funding ‘could lead to 500,000 deaths in South Africa’

by Kat Lay, Global health correspondent

Sweeping notices of termination of funding have been received by organisations working with HIV and Aids across Africa, with dire predictions of a huge rise in deaths as a result.

After the US announced a permanent end to funding for HIV projects, services across the board have been affected, say doctors and programme managers, from projects helping orphans and pregnant women to those reaching transgender individuals and sex workers.

The cuts could result in 500,000 deaths over the next 10 years in South Africa, modelling suggests, while thousands of people are already set to lose their jobs in the coming days.

The US government has announced it will be cutting more than 90% of the contracts of its key development agency, USAid, and slashing $60bn (£48bn) of overseas aid spending.

The Guardian has heard that notices of termination have been sent to organisations in other countries in the region, including Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, as well as with the joint United Nations programme UNAids.

Read the full report here:

America must not surrender its democratic values

‘As Americans, we cannot stay quiet as Trump abandons centuries of our commitment to democracy.’ Photograph: Chris Kleponis/UPI/REX/Shutterstock

For 250 years, the United States has held itself up as a symbol of democracy – an example of freedom and self-governance to which the rest of the world could aspire. People have long looked to our declaration of independence and constitution as blueprints for how to guarantee those human rights and freedoms.

Tragically, all of that is changing. As Donald Trump moves this country towards authoritarianism, he is aligning himself with dictators and despots who share his disdain for democracy and the rule of law.

This week, in a radical departure from longstanding US policy, the Trump administration voted against a United Nations resolution which clearly stated that Russia began the horrific war with Ukraine. That resolution also called on Russia to withdraw its forces from occupied Ukraine, in line with international law. The resolution was brought forward by our closest allies, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and dozens more democratic nations. And 93 countries voted “yes”.

Rather than side with our longstanding allies to preserve democracy and uphold international law, the president voted with authoritarian countries such as Russia, North Korea, Iran and Belarus to oppose the resolution. Many of the other opponents of that resolution are undemocratic nations propped up by Russian military aid.

Let’s be clear: this was not just another UN vote. This was the president of the United States turning his back on 250 years of our history and openly aligning himself with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. This was the president of the United States undermining the independence of Ukraine.

Read the full opinion piece here:

Russia lauds 'substantive' talks with US in Istanbul

The Russian foreign ministry praised the latest round of talks with the United States in a statement on Friday, calling them “substantive and businesslike”.

Russian and US teams held six hours of talks in Turkey on Thursday to try to restore the normal functioning of their embassies, and Vladimir Putin said initial contacts with Donald Trump’s administration had inspired hope.

The foreign ministry said the delegations had discussed issues related to what it said was the illegal confiscation of Russia’s diplomatic property in the US and had asked the Americans to consider restoring direct air links.

It said both sides had agreed on steps to restore the uninterrupted financing and normal operations of their respective embassies, Reuters reports.

Ex-Washington Post editor Marty Baron rebukes Bezos: ‘betrayal of free expression’

Anna Betts

Marty Baron, a highly regarded former editor of the Washington Post, has said that Jeff Bezos’s announcement that the newspaper’s opinion section would narrow its editorial focus was a “betrayal of the very idea of free expression” that had left him “appalled”.

In an interview with the Guardian, Baron also said: “I don’t think that [Bezos] wants an editorial page that’s regularly going after Donald Trump.”

On Wednesday, the billionaire newspaper owner and Amazon founder sent an email to Post staffers announcing that the newspaper’s editorial section would shift its editorial focus and that only opinions that support and defend “personal liberties” and “free markets” would be welcome, and other viewpoints “will be left to be published by others”.

Bezos’s announcement was met with criticism and resulted in the departure of the newspaper’s opinions editor, David Shipley. Baron, who was executive editor of the Washington Post from 2012 until 2021 and is one of the most esteemed figures in American journalism, blasted Bezos’s decision.

You can read the full report here:

Cardinal McElroy calls for compassion in Trump's immigration policy

Cardinal Robert McElroy speaks during a news conference Thursday 27 February 2025. Photograph: Gregory Bull/AP

Cardinal Robert McElroy, the bishop of San Diego who is preparing to take over as archbishop of Washington DC next month, has called for a compassionate approach toward refugees and immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

Associated Press reported that in a press conference in San Diego he said the removal of immunity for houses of worship from immigration enforcement is particularly problematic, and a “deep moral question.”

“When these places become targets of ICE raids, it strikes fear in everyone’s hearts, and it acts as a deterrent to people going to church and freely worshipping or going to schools,” he said. “That’s why it’s so deadly.”

McElroy, 70, is set to replace retiring Cardinal Wilton Gregory.

The Republican-controlled Congress has voted to repeal a federal fee on oil and gas producers who release high levels of methane, undoing a major piece of Joe Biden’s climate policy, Associated Press reports.

The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines 52-47 to repeal the fee, following a similar House vote Wednesday.

The American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, applauded the move, calling the fee a “duplicative, punitive tax on American energy production that stifles innovation”.

“Republicans are helping out the absolutely worst offenders of methane leakage,’’ said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the environment panel. “The companies only pay the methane fee if they don’t meet their own industry standard for … avoiding leaks of a dangerous, explosive, poisonous greenhouse gas.”

China reacts to Trump tariff threat and Rubio comments on fentanyl

China’s foreign ministry has hit out at comments made by secretary of state Marco Rubio. Reuters reports that the ministry said Rubio’s comments that China may be flooding the US with fentanyl demonstrated a “cold war mentality”.

At a regular press conference, ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said China expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to Rubio’s comments, adding: “The US keeps coercing and threatening China, which will only backfire on itself.”

The ministry also asserted that US criticism of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs were the “lies of the century”.

China’s commerce ministry has also commented on Donald Trump’s latest tariff announcement, vowing to retaliate, and accusing the US of “shifting the blame” on fentanyl flows.

Reuters quotes a statement from the ministry which urged Washington to “return to the right track of properly resolving differences through dialogue on an equal footing as soon as possible.”

RFK Jr criticised over failure to address measles outbreak in Texas

An official at the Health and Human Services agency (HHS) has criticised Robert F Kennedy’s failure to address a measles outbreak in Texas which has led to the first recorded measles death in the US since 2015.

Speaking to NBC News anonymously, the official told the news network Kennedy has done nothing about the outbreak, observing: “It’s almost like he’s still in campaign-mode rather than realizing he’s head of a large agency and workforce.”

It was reported that Kennedy has yet to issue any all staff emails or visit several HHS agencies.

Kennedy downplayed the measles outbreak yesterday, saying: “There have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country so it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

The Texas outbreak has affected more than 120 people and has led to the death of a school-age child.

Labor unions cheer court ruling that blocks Trump's mass firings

Welcome to the Guardian’s rolling coverage of the second Donald Trump administration and US politics.

Labor unions were celebrating after a federal judge in California temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ordering the US defense department and other agencies to carry out the mass firings.

Here are the rest of the headlines:

• The Trump administration has fired hundreds of workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency.

• The Trump administration has taken down the online application form for several popular student debt repayment plans, causing confusion among borrowers and likely creating complications for millions of Americans with outstanding loans.

• The US justice department has released additional files related to the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

• New laws in Florida impose harsher penalties for offenses committed by people illegally in the US than for everyone else, with an automatic death sentence for anyone who is in the US illegally and is convicted of first-degree murder.

• Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected in Washington DC later today, where he and Donald Trump are expected to hold a joint press conference.