Key events
Opening summary …
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:
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Senate Democrats introduced a series of resolutions condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and daring Republicans to object. Republicans did object
