January 31, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Tariffs in certain circumstances do not cause inflation problems.

President Donald Trump’s first-term tariffs did not meaningfully raise inflation, although they were far narrower in scope than what Trump is currently proposing, and the pandemic that follow skewed some of the inflationary aspects of the tariffs — many of which remained in place during the Biden administration.

But mainstream economists largely agree that tariffs cause inflation. That’s because importers — not the countries exporting the goods — pay the tax, and they typically pass that cost on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

New research from the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggests Trump’s aggressive tariff campaign will force American consumers to pay more for practically everything — from foreign-made sneakers and toys to food.

They also can lead to trade wars. China, Europe and Canada, for example, retaliated against America with their own tariffs on particular items after the first Trump administration levied tariffs on certain items from those nations.

Trump’s proposed tariffs could add $272 billion a year to tax burdens, according to Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay Cross-Border Solutions. The Peterson Institute has estimated Trump’s proposed tariffs would cost the typical US household over $2,600 a year.

Still, some proponents of Trump’s plan say the risk is worth the reward. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, last week told CNBC that if tariffs cause a little inflation but address a national security issue, then people should “get over it.”

Read more about Trump’s proposed tariffs here.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during his Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Thursday in Washington, DC.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, told members of the Senate Finance Committee that he would divest his interest in litigation associated with the HPV vaccine Gardasil, updating a previous ethics agreement that indicated he could benefit financially from its outcome, according to written responses to senators’ questions.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and member of the Senate Finance Committee, which will vote on whether to advance Kennedy’s nomination, said in a statement Friday that Kennedy’s interest in litigation brought by the law firm Wisner Baum over the HPV vaccine is a “dangerous” conflict of interest “that would allow him to profit from an anti-vax lawsuit while serving as HHS secretary.”

In ethics records released last week, Kennedy indicated he intended to keep collecting fees related to past referrals of clients to the law firm, whose specialties include pursuing pharmaceutical drug injury cases. The firm is suing the pharmaceutical giant Merck over Gardasil, a vaccine that prevents diseases caused by HPV, the human papillomavirus.

Kennedy had indicated that while he’d resign from his consulting agreement with the firm if confirmed by the Senate, he was entitled “to receive 10% of fees awarded in contingency cases referred” to the firm.

The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials, with dozens of FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack and Trump-related investigations as well as some supervisors being evaluated for possible removal as soon as the end of Friday, according to people briefed on the matter.

The changes highlight how the new administration has moved quickly to deliver on President Donald Trump’s vow to strike back at the Justice Department and FBI he claims has been weaponized against him. Trump has falsely accused agents of abuse in their court-ordered search of his Mar-a-Lago home and of their treatment of Capitol rioters.

Interim leaders at the Justice Department have spent the past week drawing up lists of people whose work at the bureau has earned disfavor with Trump for a variety of reasons. Agents and analysts have been warned by FBI leadership that they may be asked to resign or face termination.

Agents who worked the investigation of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, and those who investigated the roughly 1,600 rioters charged or convicted connected to the violent US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, have been concerned they could face retribution for doing work they were assigned to do.

The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.

The Trump purge at DOJ’s main headquarters began last week — within minutes of the new interim leaders being sworn in — as some senior career lawyers were notified that they were being reassigned to a task force focused to an immigration-related issues and so-called sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that generally decline to assist federal deportation efforts. The reassignment is widely viewed as an effort to force out senior career officials, some of whom have since resigned.

President Donald Trump has long praised tariffs as effective economic policy. On Monday, Trump called “tariff” the fourth-most beautiful word in the dictionary, behind “God,” “love” and “religion.”

And Trump has repeatedly (and incorrectly) said that “the tariff sheriff,” former President William McKinley, ushered in an era of American prosperity at the end of the 19th century by going all-in on tariffs. Though the US economy was growing strong in the 1890s, that was largely on the back of practically unrestricted immigration, among other factors.

Still, Trump has used and promised to employ tariffs for three primary purposes: to raise revenue, to bring trade into balance and to bring rival countries to the negotiating table.

America is running massive deficits, and Trump’s tax cut plan could put the budget even deeper in the hole. Trump has said the tariffs will make up for lost revenue: He predicted last week in a keynote address to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum that the tariffs would bring in hundreds of billions of dollars — perhaps trillions of dollars — into the US Treasury.

And Trump likes tariffs because they can force countries to give up something he believes is in America’s best interest. Although tariffs are charged to importers, they can dissuade buyers from purchasing goods from tariffed countries, hurting those nations’ economies.

That has led some of them to seek agreements to avoid tariffs. Trump has said he wants Canada and Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants and illegal drugs into the United States.

And for China, Trump has said tariffs would be aimed at forcing the country to make good on what he said was a stated promise to him that the government would execute people caught sending fentanyl to the United States.

Read more about the tariffs here.

Canadian officials are expected to meet Friday with White House border czar Tom Homan in a bid to reach a deal that would stave off proposed tariffs, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. Immigration and fentanyl trafficking are among the issues expected to be discussed.

A delegation of senior Canadian officials has been in Washington for several days, meeting with various administration officials to try to avert the imposition of 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods, which President Donald Trump has said will go into effect on February 1.

On the eve of that deadline, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the deadline for tariffs on Canada — as well as Mexico and China — held firm.

Trump has lamented the situation along the US northern border, despite the number of crossings dropping. Canada also exported $377 billion in goods to the United States in 2024, according to data from the US Census Bureau, and notched a roughly $55 billion trade surplus — a fact that has long irked Trump, who believes tariffs can chip away at what he sees as an imbalance of economic power.

Canada’s behind-the-scenes effort could turn into full-court press if the levies go into effect. Premiers from all of Canada’s provinces — led by Ontario Premier Doug Ford — are planning to travel to Washington on February 12 for a larger mission.

So far, the discussions over the February 1 tariffs have largely excluded Trump’s economic advisers since the president is currently seeking deliverables from Mexico and Canada outside the realm of trade. A trade pact between the three North American neighbors does not face a renewal deadline until July 2026, though Trump is said to want to renegotiate it sooner.

President Donald Trump will move forward with new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China on Saturday, the White House said, affirming the president would stick to his February 1 deadline for the new duties that could have widespread effect on the economy.

She said the tariffs would amount to a 25% duty on Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on China “for illegal fentanyl they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country, which has killed tens of millions of Americans.”

“These are promises made and promises kept by the president,” she said.

She declined to offer additional details on the new tariffs, including whether they would be applied to oil imports or whether additional exemptions would be included.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Friday.

The White House on Friday sought to reassure Americans that air travel remains safe while still slamming federal hiring standards that the Trump administration has baselessly linked to Wednesday’s midair crash.

Trump “believes that it is still indeed safe and Americans should feel safe traveling out of our skies,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing Friday.

“With that said two things can be true at the same time, and we certainly have seen the deterioration of federal hiring standards at the Federal Aviation Administration, and the president wants to increase those standards,” Leavitt said.

More context: No investigation has placed blame for the crash on Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hiring standards and the press secretary’s comments come as bodies continued to be recovered from the Potomac River.

While pinning blame on FAA hiring standards, the president has separately and simultaneously said the pilots of the Army Black Hawk helicopter were “flying too high.”

Leavitt later also defended Trump’s explicit description of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg during his remarks to the press the previous day.

“I think one of the things that the American people love most about this president is that he often says what they are thinking but sometimes lack the courage to say themselves,” she said.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt is hosting a briefing at the White House on Friday.

This is Leavitt’s second White House press briefing and her first since Wednesday night’s deadly midair collision over the Potomac. President Donald Trump and several of his senior officials separately addressed the press about the crash from the briefing room on Thursday.

The Justice Department put forward its fullest defense yet of President Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for the children of certain immigrants, arguing in court filings Friday that past “near-universal” recognition of birthright citizenship was “erroneous.”

In a filing with a federal court in Maryland, the DOJ said that the classes of US-born children that Trump would deprive citizenship are outside the Constitution’s protections because they owe an allegiance to the home country of their immigrant parents.

The lawsuit was brought by pregnant immigrants in the US – including women who are seeking asylum or are on temporary student visas – whose children would be denied citizenship under the policy. The department faces a Friday deadline for similar filings in some of the other legal cases, including the two cases brought by Democratic state attorneys general.

In one of those cases, a judge in Seattle last week called the president’s policy “blatantly unconstitutional.”

That judge, US District Judge John Coughenour, issued a temporary restraining order – lasting through next Thursday – that halts administration actions to implement the policy. In the coming days, several courts will consider whether to impose a longer lasting preliminary injunction on Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship. Such a ruling will kick off appeals that would ultimately escalate the matter to the US Supreme Court.

In the Maryland case, US District Judge Deborah Boardman, a President Joe Biden-appointee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday morning, and hearings in the other cases will happen in the following days.

CNN’s Devan Cole contributed reporting to this post.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed that Democrats would fight against Donald Trump and his agenda in Congress, in courts and “in the streets” in a news conference in Brooklyn on Friday morning.

Jeffries was pressed repeatedly about the efforts by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, to cozy up to Trump as he faces corruption charges. But Jeffries, who represents Brooklyn, declined to weigh in on Adams’ moves and told reporters he would “keep focused” on fighting Trump’s “extreme MAGA agenda” and would speak about Adams at the “appropriate time.”

“We are gonna fight it legislatively, we are gonna fight it in the courts, and we’re gonna fight it in the streets,” Jeffries said.

The New York Democrat said he remained focused on the “illegal, unlawful and extreme federal freeze” that Trump’s budget office sought to enact earlier this week.

“We fought it, we stopped it and we will never surrender,” Jeffries said.

Jeffries also rebuked Trump for his “shameful” suggestion that a push for diversity in government had a role in the deadly midair collision near Washington, DC.

“There is not a scintilla of evidence that exists to suggest that women and people of color are to blame for the tragedy that took place. And it was shameful,” Jeffries said.

The White House released a statement calling Rep. Jeffries’ remarks “a sick call for violence” and called on the Minority Leader to apologize for his comments.

“The notion that Leader Jeffries supports violence is laughable. Republicans are the party that pardons violent felons who assault police officers. Democrats are the party of John Lewis and the right to petition the government peacefully,” a spokesperson for Rep. Jeffries responded in a statement to CNN.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will discuss the possibility of deporting suspected Tren de Aragua gang members to El Salvador in an upcoming meeting with Salvadorean president Nayib Bukele, according to State Department special envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone.

Since taking office in 2019, Bukele has launched a security crackdown in El Salvador, detaining tens of thousands of people on suspicion of gang membership.

Once suffering from the highest murder-rate of any country outside a war zone, El Salvador has now fewer murders than the United States according to government figures. But human rights activists say the Bukele administration’s approach is overbroad – new legislation introduced as part of the crackdown allows police to detain citizens without proof.

Last year, El Salvador opened a controversial new maximum security prison for alleged gang members, known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

Rubio begins his tour of Central America this weekend, and is expected to arrive in San Salvador on Monday.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency building is seen on August 21, 2024 in Washington, DC.

More than 1,100 employees at the Environmental Protection Agency received notice this week that they were deemed to be on probationary status and warning they could be fired immediately, according to an email obtained by CNN.

Probationary employees receiving the email have been working at the agency for less than a year. The emails began to go out on late Wednesday afternoon, according to an EPA union official.

The same message will be sent to other agency workforces, a White House official said. Across the US government, the latest data shows there are more than 220,000 employees on probation.

“As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you pursuant to 5 CFR § 315.804,” the EPA email to probationary employees reads. “The process for probationary removal is that you receive a notice of termination, and your employment is ended immediately.”

“Each employee’s status will be determined individually,” the email adds.

The email also spells out an appeals process employees can take to see if they are eligible for extra protection.

The approach is similar to how Elon Musk, now a key Trump adviser, handled layoffs when he bought Twitter — make a new email alias (in this case, notice@epa.gov) and then send mass termination letters to everyone on it.

The US Office of Personnel Management declined to comment, and the White House and EPA did not respond to requests for additional comment.

Read the full story here.

In this 2023 photo, then-Sen. JD Vance delivers remarks to the press alongside Donald Trump at the East Palestine Fire Department station on February 22, 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio.

Vice President JD Vance will return to East Palestine, Ohio on Monday to mark the two-year anniversary of the train derailment there, according to a source familiar.

He will be joined by EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno and the congressional delegation representing East Palestine.

This post has been updated with additional details.

In less than a week, a deadline will arrive for federal workers who don’t want to return to the office to accept a buyout.

The offer, which was outlined in a memo posted to the US Office of Personnel Management’s website Tuesday night, said that workers who accept the buyout will need to resign by February 6 and would receive severance pay through September 30.

The memo outlining the new policy states that the agency emailed federal employees “on January 28, 2025 presenting a deferred resignation offer.”

The email was sent from hr1@opm.gov using the Trump administration’s new mass email system.

The subject line of the email to federal employees was “Fork in the Road,” the same subject line of an ultimatum message Elon Musk sent to his employees at Twitter in 2022. On the campaign trail, Musk frequently talked about downsizing the federal government. He has played an integral part in the rollout of the federal government buyout, an official told CNN, through his position leading the Department of Government Efficiency in the Trump administration.

CNN’s Brian Todd explores the buyout plan, which the White House denies is a purge, arguing instead that it will reduce the size of government:

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Federal employees face buyout offer

03:14 - Source: CNN

The oil industry is strongly urging President Donald Trump to shield oil and natural gas from potential US tariffs on Canada and Mexico, two key sources of foreign crude, oil industry sources told CNN on Friday.

The source described conversations with the Trump administration as fluid and “very lively.”

Trump suggested on Thursday that oil may be excluded from his threatened February 1 tariffs of 25% on Canada and Mexico.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether a decision has been made.

Canada is the largest source of foreign oil into the United States.

Roughly 4 million barrels of Canadian oil flow into the United States each day, according to federal data. That’s four times more than US oil imports from all of OPEC. If Canada were a US state, it would be the second-largest producer of oil, behind only Texas.

This Dec. 10, 2016 photo shows the exterior of the the detention center at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval base, in Cuba.

Senior Trump officials are working up plans to expand holding capacity for migrants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a source familiar with the discussions, a process that’s expected to last weeks and likely fall short of President Donald Trump’s stated goal of 30,000 people.

Guantanamo Bay hosts a separate migrant processing center previously used to temporarily house migrants apprehended at sea.

Under the Biden administration, Homeland Security officials assessed the center to temporarily hold migrants in the event of mass maritime migration. The process to expand capacity was expected to take around 30 days, depending on what assistance could be pulled in and how quickly, according to a former Homeland Security official.

Trump’s top immigration advisers previously told CNN that management of a Guantanamo Bay detention facility for migrants would be overseen by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the base could be reserved to detain what she described as “the worst of the worst.”

President Donald Trump listens to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speak during a luncheon with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda at the White House on June 12, 2019 in Washington, DC.

Since President Donald Trump won the election in November, businesses across the globe have been bracing for higher tariffs — a key day one promise the president made.

But over a week into his presidency, Trump has yet to enact any new tariffs.

That could change, come 11:59 p.m. ET on Saturday — the deadline Trump set for when he said he will slap 25% tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian goods and potentially a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods.

The tariffs, he said, will be imposed as a way of punishing the three nations, which Trump claims are responsible for helping people enter the country illegally and supplying fentanyl consumed in the US.

Speaking to reporters from the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he meant business, especially with his tariff threats on Mexico and Canada. Should he be believed?

Yes and no, said Trump’s former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Ross, who was one of a handful of initial Cabinet members in Trump’s first administration who kept their position for the entire four-year term, said he advocated for such exclusions when he advised Trump on tariff policies.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent supports a gradual approach as well as carving out exclusions for certain goods, he said in his confirmation hearing. But Howard Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, said he endorsed a blanket tariff approach. There are pros and cons to both, said Ross.

“When we put the steel tariffs in, we got 11,000 requests for exclusions. There aren’t 11,000 legitimate requests,” Ross said, referring to the 25% tariff Trump levied on steel imported from most countries to the US in 2018 unless they satisfied certain qualifying exemption criteria. Many of those requests were denied, he added.

In addition, exclusions for certain countries’ products or certain goods quickly created “a series of whack-a-moles,” he said.

Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, is in Venezuela on “a very specific special mission” focused on the repatriation of Venezuelan “criminals and gang members” and the release of detained Americans, US State Department Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone on Friday confirmed.

In a call with reporters, Claver-Carone urged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro “to heed” Grenell’s demands, “because ultimately, there will be consequences otherwise.”

“This is not a quid pro quo. It’s not a negotiation in exchange for anything,” he said, adding that the US does not need Venezuelan oil.

Read more about the meeting in Venezuela here.

In this June 23, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump tours a section of the border wall in San Luis, Arizona.

No longer just campaign trail rhetoric, President Donald Trump’s insistence that immigration to the United States amounts to an “invasion” may be critical to unlocking extraordinary powers as the administration carries out his deportation agenda.

Multiple executive orders and agency memos use the word “invasion” to describe why Trump is taking actions that tighten the US border, empower state and local officials to carry out immigration enforcement, and take a more aggressive approach to detaining and deporting migrants.

Some orders signed by Trump last week use “Invasion” in their titles, and one proclamation is built specifically around a constitutional provision that says the federal government is obligated to protect the states “against invasion.” In another early action, Trump issued a national emergency declaration the described an “invasion” at the border that “has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.”

The word choice is intentional.

Legal experts believe the administration could try to rely on the invasion rationale to justify possible future actions that would go beyond the limits of immigration law and that would ignore the procedures in place for border-crossers.

“The invasion point comes in here, because the most basic and longstanding purpose to having a military is to stop people from invading your country. And that’s what’s happening at the southern border,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration. “The president doesn’t need anything beyond his commander in chief authority to block people from crossing the border illegally.”

It also previews how the Justice Department will defend his immigration agenda in court, hoping to capitalize on how courts have historically deferred to a president’s actions in instances of a national emergency.

Read more about how Trump’s “invasion” rhetoric may justify stricter immigration enforcement.

A truck loaded with pickups drives to cross to the US at the Otay commercial crossing port in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico.

President Donald Trump is set to impose his tariffs over the weekend, gambling that taxing American companies for imported goods will ultimately punish the countries that make stuff Americans want – and bring those nations to the negotiating table. But it’s a risky bet that could easily backfire on American consumers and the economy.

In the United States, tariffs typically serve a limited but important purpose: They are intended to grow America’s economy by incentivizing the purchase of made-in-the-USA goods. They accomplish that by effectively penalizing American companies that buy foreign goods with high taxes.

Economists largely believe that, in limited circumstances, tariffs can be effective tools for economic growth. But Trump believes that tariffs have an altogether different purpose.

Why does Trump want tariffs?

Trump has long praised tariffs as effective economic policy. On Monday, Trump called “tariff” the fourth-most beautiful word in the dictionary, behind “God,” “love” and “religion.”

He has used and promised to employ tariffs for three primary purposes: to raise revenue, to bring trade into balance and to bring rival countries to the negotiating table.

When will tariffs happen?

Trump and his administration have been consistent: Tariffs in some form are coming on Saturday. But they’ve been mum about when, exactly, they would come, and they’ve offered conflicting information about what tariffs would be announced this weekend.

Read more on Trump’s tariff threats here.

Sen. Chris Murphy speaks on August 21, 2024 during the DNC in Chicago.

President Donald Trump is using his latest attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives within federal agencies to distract from chaos at the Federal Aviation Administration, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut said

On Thursday, Trump blamed Democrats and DEI initiatives for the deadly midair collision involving a passenger plane and a military helicopter, despite the investigation being in its early stages.

“I have common sense, OK?” Trump said when pressed what evidence he had to give credence to the blame he piled on the Biden and Obama administrations. “Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t.”

Trump has also insinuated that the country’s safety is “at risk” when “women” and “Black people” are at the helm of federal agencies like the FAA, Murphy told CNN Friday.

More on the agency: The FAA, which is part of the DOT, is operating without a permanent administrator since Mike Whitaker stepped down earlier this month. A number of other leadership positions are also vacant, the FAA’s website shows. In remarks late Thursday morning, Trump announced that Chris Rocheleau, a former chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association, will lead the FAA in an acting capacity.

Mexico is awaiting any potential US tariffs with a “cool head,” Mexico’s president said in her daily presser on Friday, ahead of the Trump administration’s deadline to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports.

Referring to the tariffs that could be imposed on Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum told journalists, “We have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C for whatever the US government decides. It is very important for the people of Mexico to know that we will always defend our people’s dignity, our sovereignty, and engage in dialogue as equals.”

She continued, “We will wait with a cool head to make decisions accordingly. We are prepared and will continue this dialogue.”

She also stressed that the Mexican government is in ongoing dialogue with the Trump administration, where they have “discussed various topics.”

Her words come as Trump’s tariff threat looms over both Mexico and Canada. President Donald Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony earlier this month that his administration will impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on February 1 — an extraordinary change in North American trade policy.

Keep in mind: The tariffs, if enacted, could strain Americans’ wallets, especially given Mexico and Canada are two of America’s top three trade partners. Collectively, they accounted for 30% of the value of all the goods the US imported last year, according to federal trade data.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro arrives to deliver his annual address to the nation in Caracas, Venezuela on January 15.

Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, is expected to meet with Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro in the country on Friday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Topics of the meeting: Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights, among other things with the Venezuelan leader. As Trump has prioritized his campaign promise of mass deportations, Maduro has refused to take Venezuelan nationals back. The US has generally been unable to send Venezuelans back because of frosty relations. Trump officials have discussed a more aggressive approach to include sanctions as they try to force their hand on the issue.

The meeting is expected to take place this afternoon, and the cases of several US detainees in Venezuela are also expected to be a topic of discussion. The Interior Ministry was reviewing those cases yesterday ahead of today’s meeting, a source tells CNN.

Grenell has met with the opposition multiple times since Trump was elected and they were invited with him again Friday in Venezuela, the source said.

More on US-Venezuela relations: Edmundo Gonzalez, who the US recognizes as Venezuela’s president-elect and attended Trump’s inauguration, has warned the White House against cutting a deal with Maduro on deportation flights, as he’s advocated for finding a third country to send deportees to.

In 2019, the first Trump administration not only envisioned a “maximum pressure” strategy to oust Maduro but managed to form a coalition of over fifty countries to recognize Juan Guaidó, then the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, as the country’s legitimate head of state, an affront Maduro never fails to mention any time he delivers a speech directed abroad. Several members of President Trump’s Cabinet, including the president’s national security adviser Mike Waltz, have also criticized Maduro in recent years.

Trump has also railed against Tren de Aragua, the criminal gang originated in a Venezuela prison, in the early days of his second term in office. A series of immigration executive actions by Trump on the first day of his second term included a recommendation that the State Department start the process of designating the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist organization.

CNN is reaching out to the Venezuelan government for comment.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Stefano Pozzebon contributed reporting to this post. This post has been updated with additional reporting on the meeting.

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Friday morning to post that the Black Hawk helicopter was “flying too high, by a lot” before the midair collision near Reagan National Airport that resulted in the deaths of 67 people.

“The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Trump posted.

That post comes as the New York Times is reporting that the helicopter in Wednesday’s collision may have been flying outside its approved flight path, at a higher altitude than it was supposed to be, and at least half a mile off the approved route.

It’s unclear whether the president’s post was based on an official briefing or were just speculation. Trump’s post also came as his newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on Fox News Friday morning suggesting that “we don’t quite know” yet who was at the wrong altitude.

“We are looking at altitude. And the president was clear about that. Someone was at the wrong altitude. The investigation will help us understand that. Was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now, we don’t quite know,” Hegseth said Friday.

An investigation into the collision is underway as recovery efforts have continued into Friday.

President Donald Trump signs documents as he issues executive orders in the Oval Office, on January 20.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to sign executive orders Friday at 3 p.m. ET at the White House, according to the White House.

Trump is then scheduled to depart from the South Lawn at 5 p.m. ET, en route to Palm Beach, Florida, where he is expected to spend the weekend at Mar-a-Lago.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will brief the media at 1 p.m. ET.

Track Trump’s latest executive actions below:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks in Washington, DC on January 21.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic beginning on Saturday, the State Department announced Friday.

The trip to Central America will be his first as secretary of state.

The trip comes as President Donald Trump has made stemming migration to the United States a top priority and has enacted a slew of directives meant to crack down, including ordering thousands more troops to the US southern border. Trump has also expressed interest in the US taking back control of the Panama Canal.

Rubio is likely to discuss the Darién Gap, a treacherous route between Central and South America that has seen an uptick of migrants, in his meetings in Panama. Last year, the US and Panamanian governments signed an agreement aiming to curb the passage of undocumented migrants on this route.

He is also expected to discuss economic and supply chain issues as another top priority of the trip. It is unclear whether he plans to raise the matter of control of the Panama Canal. On Wednesday, Panama’s president José Raúl Mulino said that everything that Trump has said about the Panama Canal is “false.”

“The Panama Canal is of Panama’s country,” he said. “It is not a gift.”

This post has been updated with additional information.

President Donald Trump speaks about the mid-air crash between American Airlines flight 5342 and a military helicopter in Washington, DC on Thursday.

President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed the Federal Aviation Administration’s “diversity push” in part for the plane collision that killed 67 people in Washington, DC. But DEI backers, including most top US companies, believe a push for diversity has been good for their businesses.

Trump did not cite any evidence for how efforts to hire more minorities, people with disabilities and other groups less represented in American workforces led to the crash, saying “it just could have been” and that he had “common sense.” But Trump criticized the FAA’s effort to recruit people with disabilities during Joe Biden’s administration, even though the FAA’s Aviation Safety Workforce Plan for the 2020-2029 period, issued under Trump’s first administration, promoted and supported “the hiring of people with disabilities and targeted disabilities.”

It’s not the first time opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, have said they can kill people. “DEI means people DIE,” Elon Musk said after the California wildfires, criticizing the Los Angeles Fire Department and city and state officials for their efforts to advance diversity in their workforces.

The Trump administration has clamped down on DEI in the federal government, ordering government DEI employees to be placed on leave, ending the use of DEI in hiring and federal contracting, and other measures to end DEI practices.

In the business world, DEI is typically a mix of recruiting practices, employee training and other measures to boost representation of people of different races, genders, classes, religions and other backgrounds.

Rather than lower hiring standards, supporters say DEI broadens the pool of people employers would consider for a job, in theory finding even more qualified people for tasks than they would have found in the past. Companies that abandon efforts to promote diversity and inclusion risk missing out on the best talent, business leaders say.

Read more on Trump and DEI here.

Chris Wright arrives to testify before a US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on January 15.

The Senate voted 62-35 to break a filibuster on Chris Wright’s nomination to lead the Department of Energy. Senators have agreed to vote on Wright’s final confirmation to the post on Monday.

The Senate confirmation vote for Doug Collins, the nominee for the Department of Veterans Affairs, is also scheduled for Monday after an 83-13 vote to break a filibuster on his nomination.

Eight members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet have been confirmed as of Thursday evening. The latest confirmation was Doug Burgum as secretary of the Department of the Interior.

Cabinet members include the vice president and the heads of the 15 executive departments in the presidential line of succession. A president may also choose to elevate other roles to join the Cabinet. The following list includes roles that were Cabinet-level in Trump’s first Cabinet or that he specified in the announcement will be included this term.

Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Three of President Donald Trump’s most controversial nominees for major administration roles faced sharp questions in the Senate during hearings Thursday from Democrats as well as several Republican senators in what amounted to the most direct skepticism from GOP senators over Trump’s nominees to date.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to be Health and Human Services secretary, was pressed on his views on vaccines by GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who said he had “reservations” about Kennedy’s past positions on vaccine safety.

Tulsi Gabbard, who has been tapped to be the director of national intelligence, faced questions from several Republicans about her views on Russian aggression, US government surveillance and NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to be FBI director, had numerous heated exchanges with Democrats during his hearing Thursday over his past comments about going after Trump’s perceived “deep state” enemies. But Patel found a largely friendly audience among Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, signaling his confirmation is on firmer ground.

Remember: If all Democrats oppose Trump’s nominees, they can only afford to lose three GOP senators on the floor to win confirmation. But Gabbard’s nomination could be in danger of not making it that far — as it would only take one Republican to block her nomination in the Senate Intelligence Committee if all Democrats on the panel oppose her.

Trump’s allies mounted a significant pressure campaign against on-the-fence Republicans to get Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation over the finish line, and similar campaigns have been promised toward GOP senators if they oppose any more Trump nominees, such as Gabbard or Kennedy.

Catch up here for more other takeaways from the confirmation hearings.