US politics briefing: Trump rails against Zelenskyy and derails Senate Republicans’ budget proposal

The Guardian is tracking Donald Trump and his administration’s latest moves with several stories, features and analyses each day. Here are some of the biggest stories in US politics that happened Wednesday, 19 February.

Trump calls Zelenskyy a ‘dictator’

The US and Ukraine appear to be heading towards an irreconcilable rift after Donald Trump escalated his attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling the Ukrainian president “a dictator” and warning that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.

The US leader’s comments on Wednesday, which were rife with falsehoods, came after Zelenskyy said Trump was “trapped” in a Russian “disinformation bubble,” following Trump’s claims that Ukraine was to blame for Russia’s 2022 invasion, remarks that echoed the Kremlin’s narrative.

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Guardian reporters also fact-checked Trump’s claims about the war in Ukraine – including blaming Zelenskyy.

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Trump endorses House budget plan

Donald Trump has derailed Senate Republicans’ budget strategy by endorsing a competing House option, leaving GOP leaders scrambling to save their agenda just weeks before a potential government shutdown.

The president’s surprise intervention came just hours after Senate Republicans moved to advance their own two-track proposal, as he declared instead that he wants “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” through the House’s reconciliation process.

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Trump orders DoJ to fire Biden-era US attorneys

Donald Trump has said that he has instructed the justice department to fire any remaining US attorneys installed by the previous administration, in an apparent move to stamp out political appointees of Joe Biden who might resist having Trump’s agenda guide prosecutorial decisions. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said: “We must ‘clean house’ IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence.”

The dismissal of US attorneys after a change in administration is typical, although the Trump administration has been unusually aggressive in pushing for mass firings across the board

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Trump expands independent regulators’ power

Donald Trump has extended his power over independent regulatory agencies – by signing an executive order making agencies established by Congress accountable to the White House. Some experts said the move clashed with mainstream interpretations of the constitution.

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Trump group sues Brazil justice involved in Bolsonaro case

Trump’s media group and the video platform Rumble have jointly filed a lawsuit against a Brazilian supreme court justice, claiming he violated the right to free speech of a far-right Brazilian influencer residing in the US.

The suit against justice Alexandre de Moraes was filed in Florida hours after the indictment of Brazil’s ex-president Jair Bolsonaro for leading a plot to cling to power after losing the 2022 election.

Last year, Moraes was involved in a months-long confrontation with Elon Musk, after ordering Musk’s social platform X to block accounts sharing far-right misinformation and anti-democratic content.

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Judge refuses to block Doge’s access to US data

A federal judge refused to immediately block Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs. The US district judge Tanya Chutkan found there were legitimate questions about the billionaire’s authority but said there was not enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.

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Trump moves to fast-track fossil fuel projects

Environmentalists were outraged on Wednesday after the Trump administration moved to fast-track fossil fuel projects through the permitting process, with activists describing it as an attempt to sidestep environmental laws that could harm waterways and wetlands.

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The state department has reportedly ordered its outposts around the world to cancel all subscriptions to news and media outlets that are supposedly “non-mission critical” in another extraordinary Trump administration crackdown on normal information channels.

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Trump calls himself king to widespread backlash

There was backlash from Democrats after Trump likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program. On Wednesday Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House then proceeded to share Trump’s quote on social media, accompanied with a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while donning a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.

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What else happened today:

• Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative, a global finance conference in Miami organized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Trump said the United States is “back and open for business” and that the “dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization … and total incompetence will be gone for ever.”

• Illinois governor JB Pritzker delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.

• In a blistering statement after asking a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams, the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove invited justice department officials and prosecutors who disagreed with the decision to quit.

• The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as Thursday, kicking off mass layoffs just as tax season begins. Further reductions in the size of the agency are expected.