Trump pulls security clearances for Biden family, Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, among others: Live updates

Lawyers for Donald Trump’s administration are considering whether his invocation of an 18th century wartime law allows federal law enforcement officers to enter homes without a warrant.

The president has deployed the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport, without due process, alleged members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, designated a foreign terrorist organization. Officials, however, have admitted that many of the immigrants flown to a prison in El Salvador last weekend don’t have criminal records.

Trump is relying on the law for only the fourth time in U.S. history. It was most recently used to detain Japanese Americans, including U.S. citizens, during the Second World War.

Donald Trump rescinded the security clearances of numerous former Democratic officials — and some still active law enforcement officials — in a Friday night memo he sent to the heads of federal departments and agencies.

I have determined that it is no longer in the national interest for the following individuals to access classified information: Antony Blinken, Jacob Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Andrew Weissmann, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Cheney, Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and any other member of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s family. Therefore, I hereby direct every executive department and agency head to take all additional action as necessary and consistent with existing law to revoke any active security clearances held by the aforementioned individuals and to immediately rescind their access to classified information. I also direct all executive department and agency heads to revoke unescorted access to secure United States Government facilities from these individuals.

This action includes, but is not limited to, receipt of classified briefings, such as the President’s Daily Brief, and access to classified information held by any member of the Intelligence Community by virtue of the named individuals’ previous tenure in the Congress.

In the event that any of the named individuals received a security clearance by virtue of their employment with a private entity, the United States Government entity that granted the security clearance should inform the private entity that these individuals’ ability to access classified information has been revoked.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

Revoking the security clearances of his political enemies not only locks them out of serving in many capacities within the US government, but also locks them out of lucrative private sector jobs they may have otherwise been qualified to hold.

Donald Trump gathered school children in a mock classroom scene at the White House on Thursday afternoon to witness the signing of an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education.

As the children watched from their small desks, each with their own replica executive orders to sign along with Trump, the president began his remarks with an update on the horrors of Ukraine’s war.

“Hopefully we can save thousands of people a week from dying. That’s what it’s all about. They’re dying… so unnecessarily,” he said grimly, forgetting his young audience.

It’s not uncommon for teachers to veer off-topic in the later days of the week, but the president was quick to return to the matter at hand.

A U.S. appeals court has refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring President Donald Trump’s administration to reinstate 25,000 workers across 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce.

A panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, stated there was no reason to delay the decision, as the judge in Baltimore, Maryland, is expected to decide next week whether to extend it further in a lawsuit filed by 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C.

On March 17, the Trump administration indicated in court filings that the agencies were working to reinstate the terminated employees while temporarily placing them on paid leave. Friday’s decision will remain in effect pending the outcome of the administration’s appeal.

The 18 agencies involved in the case include the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Treasury Department.

Typically, probationary employees have less than one or two years of service in their current roles, though some are long-time federal employees.

Most agencies have reported that they fired several hundred probationary workers, while others terminated significantly more. The Treasury Department dismissed about 7,600 individuals, the Department of Agriculture approximately 5,700, and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to court filings.

On March 13, U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore, Maryland, stated that the agencies should have followed procedures for conducting mass layoffs and ordered the reinstatement of the workers pending further litigation.

On the same day, a judge in San Francisco separately ordered that probationary workers at six agencies be reinstated, but based on different legal grounds. This case involves five of the agencies subject to Bredar’s ruling and the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Trump administration has appealed that decision and requested a San Francisco-based appeals court to pause it pending the outcome of the case.

The judges’ rulings did not prohibit agencies from terminating probationary workers entirely but raised concerns about the way the layoffs were conducted.

With reporting from Reuters

James Liddell has the story.

In a move gutting a government office responsible for conducting oversight of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Trump administration fired nearly the entire civil rights branch of the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, The New York Times reports.

The more than 100 staff members were informed they would be placed on leave for 60 days to find another job within the administration or risk being fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. The president also shut down the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for overseeing the administration’s legal immigration policies.

This is Trump’s latest effort to eliminate civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms in government agencies. However, the closure of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties stands out, especially considering the lack of transparency regarding the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The president is committed in his second term to ensuring that his administration consists of loyalists who will not attempt to obstruct his agenda.

A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.

One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine, so it’a unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region are surrounded.

Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who never seems far from a TV camera, made a solid play for possibly the worst piece of political messaging of the year to date.

Talking about weeding out Social Security fraud, Lutnick said that if the government stopped sending out checks for a month, people like his mother-in-law wouldn’t call to complain.

He went on to say that if you are the sort of person who calls to complain — you know, the type who depends on a Social Security check to buy food or pay your electricity bill because their son-in-law isn’t a billionaire — then that’s an indicator that you are possibly a fraudster.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency from their “fishing expedition” in search of a “fraud epidemic” based on “little more than suspicion” inside the Social Security Administration.

A temporary restraining order from District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander prevents the world’s wealthiest man and his team of 10 at Social Security — which Musk has baselessly labeled a “Ponzi scheme” and accused of handing out tens of billions of dollars in retirement benefits to dead people — from “unfettered” access to personal information for millions of Americans.