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US Monthly Headline News March 2025 - Page 6
Behind Elon Musk's rise to becoming the world's wealthiest entrepreneur lies an untold story of government support.
Story by David Edwards

Rep. Anna Pauling Luna (R-FL) took her fight with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) public over whether or not proxy voting will be allowed for new parents who are members of Congress.

In a Tuesday post on the X social media platform, Luna shared images of what appeared to be proof of Johnson casting proxy votes in the past.

She said Johnson was "a kind man and his heart is in the right spot but he's wrong on proxy voting for new parents."
Story by Khaleda Rahman

Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced on Monday that millions of Social Security records have been updated.

In a post on X, DOGE said the Social Security Administration has been executing a "major cleanup" of records for the past three weeks.

"Approximately 7 million numberholders, all listed age 120+, have now been marked as deceased. Another ~5 million to go," the post said

Last week, an update from DOGE said that 3.2 million Social Security number holders listed as aged over 120 had been marked as deceased.

Judge Blocks DOGE From Accessing Data
On Monday, a federal judge blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive personal data at the Department of Education, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of labor unions. They allege the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave DOGE access to systems with personal information about millions of Americans without their consent, The Associated Press reported. She had previously issued a temporary restraining order in the case.

"No matter how important or urgent the President's DOGE agenda may be, federal agencies must execute it in accordance with the law," Boardman wrote on Monday. "That likely did not happen in this case."
By Mike Scarcella and David Thomas

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that takes action against the law firm Jenner & Block, for what a White House official described as the company's actions to weaponize the government and legal system.

"We've taken action against a number of law firms that have participated either in the weaponization of government, the weaponization of the legal system for political ends, or have otherwise engaged in illegal or inappropriate activities," said White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf.
Story by Scott Wong

WASHINGTON — Facing pressure from his right flank to take on judges who have ruled against President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Tuesday floated the possibility of Congress eliminating federal courts.

It’s the latest attack from Republicans on the federal judiciary, as courts have blocked a series of actions taken by the Trump administration. In addition to funding threats, Trump and his conservative allies have called for the impeachment of certain district court judges who have ruled against him, most notably U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who attempted to halt Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants.

“We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things,” Johnson told reporters on Tuesday. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

Johnson, a former constitutional attorney, later clarified that he was making a point about Congress’ “broad authority” over the “creation, maintenance and the governance” of the courts. Article III of the Constitution established the Supreme Court but gave Congress the power to “ordain and establish” lower federal courts.
Story by Jacqueline-housden

A painting of Donald Trump hanging with other presidential portraits at Colarado capitol will be taken down after the US President claimed that his was “purposefully distorted”.

British-born artist Sarah Boardman, who now lives in Colorado Springs, painted the portrait in 2019.

Trump had described a portrait of former US president Barack Obama, also by Boardman, as “wonderful” but said: “The one on me is truly the worst”.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

House Democrats said in a statement that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the legislature.
ABC News

An 82-year-old man in Seattle woke up feeling very much alive until he and his wife opened a letter from his bank stating he was deceased.

Ned Johnson was mistakenly declared dead, which led to the cancellation of his Social Security benefits. It took him two months to prove the mistake, including numerous phone calls, letters to government officials and enduring a four-hour wait at his local Social Security office, he said.

And he told ABC News the problem is continuing to follow him.

"I've since learned that I'm on the Death Master File that apparently is going to chase me for the rest of my life," Johnson told ABC News. "It means that when Social Security declared me as deceased, there's a file that's kept ... that I'm listed on and, apparently, it doesn't go away. So we're struggling with a few issues now that are starting to crop up since we started this whole thing."
Story by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, Pro Publica

Elon Musk’s aerospace giant SpaceX allows investors from China to buy stakes in the company as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs, according to previously unreported court records.

The rare picture of SpaceX’s approach recently emerged in an under-the-radar corporate dispute in Delaware. Both SpaceX’s chief financial officer and Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major investor, were forced to testify in the case.

In December, Kahlon testified that SpaceX prefers to avoid investors from China because it is a defense contractor. There is a major exception though, he said: SpaceX finds it “acceptable” for Chinese investors to buy into the company through offshore vehicles.

“The primary mechanism is that those investors would come through intermediate entities that they would create or others would create,” Kahlon said. “Typically they would set up BVI structures or Cayman structures or Hong Kong structures and various other ones,” he added, using the acronym for the British Virgin Islands. Offshore vehicles are often used to keep investors anonymous.

Experts called SpaceX’s approach unusual, saying they were troubled by the possibility that a defense contractor would take active steps to conceal foreign ownership interests.

Kahlon, who has long been close to the company’s leadership, has said he owns billions of dollars of SpaceX stock. His investment firm also acts as a middleman, raising money from investors to buy highly sought SpaceX shares. He has routed money from China through the Caribbean to buy stakes in SpaceX multiple times, according to the court filings.
The Atlantic releases more text from chat after Trump officials claimed none of it was ‘classified information’
Chris Michael

The Atlantic magazine has published fresh messages from a group chat including top US officials where they discuss operational details of plans to bomb Yemen.

The initial revelations by the magazine and its editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, who was accidentally added to the chat on the messaging app Signal, have sparked a huge outcry in the US, with the Trump administration facing withering attacks over the disastrous leak of sensitive information.

However, the magazine did not include specific details of the attack in its initial article, saying it did not want to jeopardise national security. But numerous Trump administration officials, responding to the scandal, have said that none of the information on the Signal chat chain was “classified information” – despite the Atlantic describing it as operational details of the US strike on Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has been attacking shipping in the Red Sea.
If a democrat leaked war plans republicans would be up in arms

Trump said that even though the editor of The Atlantic was inadvertently added to a private chat about military plans, his presence had “no impact” on the military strikes in Yemen.
By Garrett Haake and Megan Lebowitz

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump stood by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, after The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief was accidentally added to a private, high-level chat on the messaging app Signal in which military plans were being discussed.

"Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man," Trump said Tuesday in a phone interview with NBC News.

Trump's comments were his first substantive remarks since The Atlantic broke the story, which detailed how journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently added to a group chat on a private messaging app in which plans for military strikes in Yemen were discussed. Goldberg said he was added to the discussion after he received a request from a user identified as Waltz.

Asked what he was told about how Goldberg came to be added to the Signal chat, Trump said: “It was one of Michael’s people on the phone. A staffer had his number on there.”

Trump said Goldberg’s presence in the chat had “no impact at all” on the military operation.

He expressed confidence in his team, saying he was not frustrated by the events leading up to The Atlantic's story. The situation, Trump said, was "the only glitch in two months, and it turned out not to be a serious one."

Waltz said in a Fox News interview Tuesday night that he takes “full responsibility” for organizing the text group, and that a staffer was not to blame for Goldberg appearing in the group.
Story by kbaker@insider.com (Kelsey Baker)

Trump officials mistakenly shared attack plans with a reporter on an unsecured app, breaching rules.
Pentagon and military leaders emphasize operational security training to protect troops.
OPSEC is the management and control of military information to mitigate an adversary's knowledge.

Trump administration officials accidentally shared planning for combat action with a reporter, and it's exactly the type of failure that military leaders have long feared — one that comes from sloppy OPSEC and smartphones.

Using Signal, a popular secure messaging app that is encrypted though not impenetrable, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, and other top officials discussed key details related to pending US airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, including weather, assets involved, and timing.

What the group failed to recognize is that one chat member was actually the top editor of The Atlantic magazine.

"We are currently clean on OPSEC," Hegseth wrote in the group chat just below an operational timeline that identified the types of planes involved and strike start times.
Story by Falyn Stempler

Federal employees have reported that the Trump administration's return to office mandates have been extremely disorganized.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an order that effectively ended remote work for federal employees, despite pre-COVID protocols that saved the government millions of dollars. He then proceeded to dismiss workers indiscriminately, including probationary staff who a judge ruled must be reinstated.

These sweeping changes have resulted in widespread confusion and chaos as federal employees report returning to offices lacking supplies and receiving unclear instructions, completely undermining efforts to save money and increase productivity. Employees from several key agencies have reported shortages of desks, computer monitors, parking spaces and even basic items like toilet paper and paper towels in their offices.
Opinion by Stephen P. Hills

What does it mean to be a centrist today?

I consider myself one. I didn’t vote for President Donald Trump and consider his administration alarming. Yet I know many Republicans and independents who voted for Trump − or wouldn’t vote against him − and they also consider themselves centrist (or “just slightly right of center”) even if they cringe at his behavior and acknowledge his flaws.

How can two sets of people so far apart in their politics both consider themselves centrist? It’s because the meaning of political labels − left, right and center − changes over time. What we need in American politics today is a solid, immutable definition of centrist. Call it our true north.

In navigation, true north is permanent, as distinct from magnetic north, or where the compass points. Magnetic north shifts along with the Earth’s magnetic field, akin to the political center shifting along with the fluctuating allure of politicians. The political true north will have to be defined by something that doesn’t move over time, along with the public’s mood. There can be no better standard than verified fact or objective reality.
How many people will die?

Story by Sriparna Roy

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday he will significantly cut the size of the department he leads, reducing about 10,000 full-time jobs and closing half its regional offices.

The restructuring, along with previous voluntary departures, will result in a total downsizing to 62,000 full-time employees from 82,000.

"We aren't just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic," Kennedy said.
Story by Angela Hart

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — President Donald Trump is vowing a new approach to getting homeless people off the streets by forcibly moving those living outside into large camps while mandating mental health and addiction treatment — an aggressive departure from the nation’s leading homelessness policy, which for decades has prioritized housing as the most effective way to combat the crisis.

“Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares,” Trump said in a presidential campaign video. “For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them to mental institutions, where they belong, with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage.”

Now that he’s in office, the assault on “Housing First” has begun.

White House officials haven’t announced a formal policy but are opening the door to a treatment-first agenda, while engineering a major overhaul of the housing and social service programs that form the backbone of the homelessness response system that cities and counties across the nation depend on. Nearly $4 billion was earmarked last year alone. But now, Scott Turner, who heads Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development — the agency responsible for administering housing and homelessness funding — has outlined massive funding cuts and called for a review of taxpayer spending.
US officials accidentally leaked Yemen attack plans in Signal chat shared with The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
Aljazeera

The Atlantic magazine has published US attack plans against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, mistakenly shared in a group chat that included its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

The release on Wednesday came after US President Donald Trump sought to downplay the significance of the texts shared on the Signal messaging app, calling them “not a big deal”.

Some of the most crucial of the published messages appear to have been sent on March 15 by an account seeming to belong to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as the US military prepared to carry out its attack on Yemen.

Vice President JD Vance, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, purportedly White House Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller (SM) and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (TG) were among those present in the chat.
Story by Billal Rahman

The inventor of the "DOGE dividend check" has said he believes that $5,000 payments for American taxpayers are within reach, once cuts are made to Social Security and Medicaid.

James Fishback, CEO of the Azoria investment company, told Dr. Phil on Wednesday: "I think we can actually get there, but it's going to depend on DOGE and Elon and the president and also everyday taxpayers. Stepping up and saying if I see waste, fraud or abuse, I report it, DOGE cuts it, and then we get a cut of that action."

Why It Matters
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is tasked with reducing the administration's operational costs and has slashed funding from several federal agencies to downsize the government.

Fishback has suggested using the savings from these reductions to distribute $5,000 checks to American taxpayers. Backed by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, the proposal aims to share some of the savings with the public, though it has not been finalized yet.
Story by Ahmad Austin Jr.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) gave a telling response to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday when asked if members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet lied under oath about the Signal chat controversy.

The American political landscape spiraled into chaos as a result of a report from The Atlantic explaining how editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat on Signal — an encrypted messaging app. In the chat, multiple members of Trump’s Cabinet discussed an attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took things a step further when he provided a detailed timeline of the attack. Goldberg initially left the timeline out of the report due to the sensitive nature of the information.

When asked about the chat at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe insisted that the material wasn’t classified information and that they weren’t aware if the timing of attacks and the weaponry were discussed in the chat. The next day, Goldberg published the screenshots to confirm that information was indeed mentioned.
Story by Suzanne Rowan Kelleher, Forbes Staff

Topline
The Trump administration’s multi-front tariff wars and escalating rhetoric are turning off international tourists, according to a growing body of travel data.

Key Facts
President Trump’s tariffs, imperialistic rhetoric and viral headlines of foreigners with legal tourist visas and green cards being detained by U.S. immigration officials are “stacking up as significant hurdles for the U.S. travel industry” and “setting international travel back several years,” Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a nonpartisan Oxford Economics company tracking tourism statistics, told Forbes.

While Tourism Economics’ end-of-2024 forecast had projected 9% growth for international inbound travel to the U.S. this year, the organization has revised its baseline forecast for a year-over-year drop of 5%—"but we recognize that it could be well worse than that, as things continue to unfold,” Sacks said.
Story by Demian Bio

The Trump administration has announced significant rollbacks in the enforcement of key financial crime laws, a move experts say could make it easier for criminals to engage in money laundering and bribery, InSight Crime reported.

Concretely, the administration has suspended enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA), which aimed to curb illicit financial flows through shell companies, and paused enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits bribery in international business.

The administration has also disbanded several Justice Department units focused on fighting corruption, both at home and abroad. The justification given for these changes is reducing regulatory burdens on businesses and improve U.S. economic competitiveness. However, critics quoted by the specialized outlet argue that these rollbacks undermine efforts to combat financial crime and organized corruption.

The U.S. Treasury Department estimates that $300 billion is laundered in the United States annually, with shell companies playing a major role. Most states do not require corporations to disclose their true owners, allowing individuals to conceal unlawful financial activity. The CTA was enacted to address this issue by requiring businesses to report beneficial ownership information to federal authorities. The Trump administration announced on March 21 that it would not enforce the CTA's reporting provisions.
Story by Ryan Bort

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) instituted a $5 cap on overdraft fees under President Joe Biden. Thankfully for major banking institutions - and unfortunately for working Americans - Donald Trump won the presidential election last November, and with his administration's blessing, Republicans just advanced legislation to repeal the cap on overdraft fees.

The Senate voted 52-48 on Thursday in favor of a resolution from Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to repeal the rule. Scott had the gall to say that removing the CFPB's cap on overdraft fees would be "good for consumers" while arguing for the resolution on the Senate floor.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the only Republican to join Democrats in opposing the resolution, disagrees. "Why would we help the big banks at the expense of working people?" Hawley asked reporters following the vote, per Semafor. "I just don't understand it."
Story by Bruce Gil

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attends a Cabinet meeting at the White House on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Thursday that it plans to eliminate approximately 3,500 positions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), even as the agency’s staff is reportedly struggling to meet product review deadlines.

The layoffs are part of a broader workforce reduction at HHS, which will cut 10,000 full-time employees across multiple agencies. That figure is in addition to the roughly 10,000 employees who have left since President Trump took office, many through voluntary separation programs.

In total, HHS said the downsizing will shrink its workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 employees and save $1.8 billion annually.

As part of the restructuring, the department is consolidating 28 divisions into 15, and its 10 regional offices will be reduced to five.
The messages had been set to delete in violation of record-keeping requirements.
By Katherine Faulders, Alexander Mallin, Peter Charalambous, and Olivia Rubin

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to preserve the contents of the chat in which top national security officials used the Signal app to discuss military strikes in Yemen as they were taking place earlier this month.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the top cabinet officials named in a lawsuit by the government transparency group American Oversight to retain any messages sent and received over Signal between March 11 and March 15.

Benjamin Sparks, a lawyer representing American Oversight, raised concerns that "these messages are in imminent danger of destruction" due to settings within Signal that can be set to delete messages automatically -- prompting Judge Boasberg to order the Trump administration file a sworn declaration by this Monday to ensure the messages are preserved.
The chat "failed soldiers, diplomats and intelligence officers," an expert said.
By Anne Flaherty and Lucien Bruggeman

The White House doubled down Wednesday on its insistence that its top national security officials did nothing wrong when they discussed a pending military strike in Yemen over a commercial messaging app known as Signal.

Former military and intelligence officials, though, say there's little doubt such exchanges never should have happened that way and warned that U.S. troops could have been put at risk.

Here's what to know about White House claims on the Signal flap:

Experts say the timing of pending military strikes is closely held sensitive information

President Donald Trump and his top aides aren't denying that they started a chat group in Signal to talk about a pending military attack on Yemen.

Instead, they are insisting the information wasn't classified because the data didn't include the location of the strikes or specific sources and methods. They also say they are looking into how the journalist -- The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg -- was inadvertently added to the chain.
Story by Lauren Peacock

President Trump took to his social media site to say that his phone call with the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was "extremely productive" causing backlash from some of his supports on X.

The two world leaders planned to speak on the phone this morning for the first time ever as Mark Carney recently became the new Canadian Prime Minister. The conversation was the first conversation between the two leaders directly, but some Trump supporter's weren't happy about the call.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that the call was "extremely productive" as the two "agreed on many things" leaving some to call him out on X.
Story by Carl Gibson

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk could be in for a confrontation with law enforcement if he follows through on a planned visit to Wisconsin on Sunday.

On Friday, Madison, Wisconsin ABC affiliate WKOW reported that Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul was announcing "legal action" against the South African centibillionaire after he offered a $2 million cash prize to Badger State voters on his X account. Kaul didn't elaborate on what specific "legal action" he intended to take, but only that it involved asking the state's courts to intervene to stop Musk from paying voters in Wisconsin's April 1 Supreme Court election between GOP-backed Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel and Democratic-backed Dane County Judge Susan Crawford. Musk said in a now-deleted tweet that he would be handing out two checks for $1 million apiece to registered voters at an upcoming event in Wisconsin, but has since stated that the $1 million prizes would instead be for those who signed a petition against "activist judges."
Story by Maryam Khanum

Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot launched by Elon Musk's xAI, has gone against the CEO of X by stating that Musk's million-dollar giveaways in Wisconsin likely violate federal law.

Upon hearing about Musk's plan to give away $1 million each to two voters in Wisconsin, X (formerly Twitter) users asked the chatbot about the legality of the giveaway.

"@grok please explain to Elon musk that his $1 million dollar giveaway violates federal law and how republicans have stacked the Supreme Court in favor of Republicans," asked one user.

In response, Grok wrote, "Elon, your $1M giveaway for voting in the WI Supreme Court election likely violates federal law (18 U.S. Code § 597) and WI law (Section 12.11) against vote buying, as it could incentivize turnout. Legal experts call it 'clearly illegal.' Also, Republicans have shifted the U.S. Supreme Court with conservative appointments, favoring their policies, though some see it as legit power use. The laws aim to protect election integrity."
By: James Edwards

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has faced backlash for his positive remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin and his support for Russian-held referenda in Ukraine. British journalist Andrew Neil condemned Witkoff as “a Kremlin stooge” and criticized his understanding of the geopolitical dynamics. Neil cautioned that views from high-ranking officials may derail peace negotiations.

Neil said, “One is just a busted flush mad American broadcaster, but the other is the president’s special envoy and he knows nothing about what he’s talking about.” He added, “I mean this guy’s a property billionaire, he’s never been involved in this level of geopolitics. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

Witkoff claimed that the core conflict in Ukraine has arisen from Russia’s claims to four regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. He noted that the regions are primarily Russian-speaking and referred to referenda showing local wishes to join Russia.
Story by Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez

Reports that Donald Trump's top national security officials accidentally shared their Yemen attack plans with The Atlantic in real-time drove the news in official Washington in recent days. But it wasn't the only damaging leak of information held by the administration this week.

Two Trump administration spreadsheets - which each include what numerous advocates and government officials say is highly sensitive information on programs funded by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) - were sent to Congress and also leaked online.

The leak, which sent a variety of international groups and nonprofits scrambling to assess the damage and protect workers operating under repressive regimes, came after the organizations had pressed the Trump administration to keep the sensitive information private and received some assurances it would remain secret.

Reached for comment, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly says: "These documents were transmitted to Congress and not publicly released by the State Department." She urged Rolling Stone to contact "whoever leaked it and in turn, made it public."
Story by Glenn Garner

With the incredibly sensitive social themes of Netflix‘s Adolescence, it should come as no surprise that some viewers are politicizing the series.

Jack Thorne, who co-created the show with star Stephen Graham, recently denounced “absurd” insinuations that knife crime in the UK “is only committed by Black boys” after unsubstantiated online claims that he changed the ethnicity of the main character to make the show’s killer 13-year old white boy Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for the murder of a girl at his school.

“We’re not making a point about race with this,” said Thorne on The News Agents podcast. “We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys.”

His statement comes after Elon Musk personally amplified one post on his social platform X, accusing Thorne of “anti-white propaganda” with the series, claiming he “race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement.”
Story by Alex Henderson

Florida has a very complex relationship with immigration.

On one hand, the Sunshine State is well-known for its abundance of immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean. When Gov. Ron DeSantis was reelected by 19 percent in 2022, he received a great deal of Latino support. Florida Republicans have a long history of courting conservative Cuban-American voters, and Donald Trump's 2024 campaign ran plenty of Spanish-language ads in South Florida.

On the other hand, DeSantis is a supporter of President Trump's mass deportations — many of which are occurring in Florida.

Defenders of immigrants' rights are pointing out that the deportations are causing a lot of Florida businesses to lose hard-working employees. DeSantis, according to The Guardian's Richard Luscombe, is offering a solution: making it easier to hire more minors. But Luscombe stresses that the Florida governor's proposal is raising child labor concerns.

At a recent immigration forum in Sarasota, Florida with Trump's "immigration czar," Tom Homan, the 46-year-old DeSantis discussed a GOP-sponsored Florida State Senate bill on employment and told attendees, "What’s wrong with expecting our young people to be working part-time now? That's how it used to be when I was growing up…. Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when teenagers used to work at these resorts? College students should be (doing) all this stuff."
President Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk is an outspoken opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but he hasn't always been. New reporting from The Washington Post examines when and how Musk's views shifted. Beth Reinhard, one of the article's writers, joins "America Decides" to break down the findings.
By  BILL BARROW

ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s order accusing the Smithsonian Institution of not reflecting American history notes correctly that the country’s Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal.”

But it doesn’t mention that the founders enshrined slavery into the U.S. Constitution and declared enslaved persons as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of the Census.

Civil rights advocates, historians and Black political leaders sharply rebuked Trump on Friday for his order, entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” They argued that his executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution is his administration’s latest move to downplay how race, racism and Black Americans themselves have shaped the nation’s story.

“It seems like we’re headed in the direction where there’s even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed, or that Jim Crow laws and segregation and racial violence against Black communities, Black families, Black individuals even occurred,” said historian Clarissa Myrick-Harris, a professor at Morehouse College, the historically Black campus in Atlanta.

The Thursday executive order cites the National Museum of African American History and Culture by name and argues that the Smithsonian as a whole is engaging in a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history.”
Story by Cleve R. Wootson Jr.

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he “couldn’t care less” if car prices spike because of his 25 percent tariffs on auto imports, saying the levies will prompt more people to buy American cars.

“I couldn’t care less. I hope [foreign automakers] raise their prices, because if they do, people are going to buy American-made cars. We have plenty,” he said in the interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker that aired Saturday.

During the interview, he said he did not warn U.S. automakers against hiking prices on their cars as reported by some news organizations. He said his message to industry leaders was: “Congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money. If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”

It was a remarkable, if politically perilous, statement from Trump amid ballooning costs on a wide range of goods. Voters’ economic anxieties propelled Trump to the White House as critics complained his predecessor wasn’t sensitive enough to the impact of persistent inflation on everyday Americans. On the campaign trail, Trump vowed that prices would begin to come down on the first day of his presidency, but they remain stubbornly high, with potentially more economic pain in coming days as more tariffs take effect.
Utah has just become the first state to ban fluoride from being added to public water systems. Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed off on the bill, despite telling Utah’s ABC4 Channel that “it’s not a bill I care that much about.” The bill, first introduced in January 2025 and passed in the state senate in February, prohibits communities from adding fluoride to public water supplies.
Story by Atlanta Black Star News

Elon Musk’s America First PAC announced Friday it had awarded $1 million to Scott Ainsworth, a mechanical engineer from Green Bay, for signing its petition protesting against “activist” judges less than a week before Wisconsin voters will go to the polls to vote for a new Supreme Court justice, one who could dramatically tilt the state’s ideological direction.

Grok, the featured AI program on his social media platform, X, took its billionaire creator to task in a post Friday morning, writing the financial incentive, though “aimed at boosting participation … could be seen as election bribery.”

“Elon Musk’s $1M checks for voting in WI’s Supreme Court election likely violate Wisconsin law (Statute 12.11), which bans offering value to induce or reward voting,” Grok wrote after being asked by a user if the move was “election fraud.”

The WI Elections Commission confirms incentives over $1 are illegal.”
By CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press AP logo

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- President Donald Trump said Sunday that "I'm not joking" about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends in early 2029.

"There are methods which you could do it," Trump said in a telephone interview with NBC News.

He also said "it is far too early to think about it."

The 22nd Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1951 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected four times in a row, says "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice."

NBC's Kristen Welker asked Trump if one potential avenue to a third term was having Vice President JD Vance run for the top job and "then pass the baton to you."

Republicans don’t give a damn about the lives of Americans they are willing to put American lives at risk to help business. How long will we let them do this?
Story by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song, ProPublica

Although it was too late for him to benefit, Daniel Kinel felt relieved in December when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally banned trichloroethylene (TCE). The compound, which has been used for dry cleaning, manufacturing, and degreasing machines, can cause cancer, organ damage, and a potentially fatal heart defect in babies, according to independent studies and the EPA. It has also been shown to greatly increase people's chances of developing Parkinson's disease.

Kinel and three of his colleagues were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. They all worked in a law office in Rochester, New York, that sat next to a dry cleaner that had dumped TCE into the soil. Kinel was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative condition at age 43, after working there for 7 years. His three colleagues have since died. At least 15 of the firm's partners developed cancers related to TCE.

"It felt good that we were finally getting rid of this terrible chemical," said Kinel, whose symptoms now make it impossible to type, write, or work as a lawyer. "My children and grandchildren would be protected."

But his feeling of solace has been short-lived.

The ban has been challenged on multiple fronts since President Donald Trump assumed office for a second time in January. Republicans in the Senate and House introduced resolutions to repeal the ban, which was vulnerable to being overturned through the Congressional Review Act because it was issued shortly before the inauguration. Meanwhile, companies and trade groups have sued to stop the ban in court. A Trump executive order delayed the implementation of the ban until March 21. And last week, the EPA asked a federal appeals court to further delay the ban until the end of May.
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