Trump signs executive order to dismantle Department of Education: Live news updates

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has insisted that “all nuclear power plants belong to the people of Ukraine” after reports that Trump said an American takeover of the country’s nuclear power would offer the “best protection” for it.

In their first conversation since the American angrily rebuked Zelensky in the Oval Office, the U.S. president reportedly suggested Washington take ownership of his country’s energy infrastructure.

But Kyiv says the discussions referred only to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is under Russian occupation.

Both Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have insisted recently that Ukraine’s forces in Kursk are surrounded by Moscow’s troops and are in imminent danger but U.S. intelligence reports are contradicting those claims.

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’s unclear why Trump is continuing to state otherwise.

During an event in Florida yesterday, Trump’s tough guy border czar Tom Homan called birthright citizenship a “magnet” for unauthorized immigration and claimed the Supreme Court still needs to decide the matter – something it has already done multiple times in decisions dating back to 1898.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) 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.

U.S. DOGE Service employees at the nation’s retirement and disability agency currently have access to Social Security data or “personally identifiable information,” government lawyers said this month.

Their level of access “provides no avenues” to change beneficiary data or payments, but gives them the ability to “review records needed to detect fraud,” lawyers wrote in court filings March 12.

President Donald Trump signed an order purporting to shut down the Department of Education yesterday, delivering a long-anticipated political win for conservatives who’ve long pushed for an end to public education in favor of private and religious schools.

Flanked by schoolchildren at desks, Trump signed the order during an East Room ceremony attended by multiple Republican governors and activists who celebrated the move, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who the president pointedly said he hopes is the last person to hold the position.

Trump claimed President Jimmy Carter’s decision to sign legislation creating the department had faced widespread opposition and insisted poor test scores among American schoolchildren proved critics “right.”

“Students in our public elementary and middle schools score worse in reading today than when the department opened, by a lot,” he said, adding that the department’s budget has nonetheless “exploded by 600 percent” to include “bureaucrats in buildings all over Washington.”

Among those reacting angrily to yesterday’s news was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a former high school teacher, who joked: “It’s so obscene that he would put a mock classroom – we all know he’s never been in one.”

Pipe bomb threats. Creepy unwanted pizza deliveries. Threatening messages.

These are some of the threats federal judges have been facing in recent weeks, adding to an already tense atmosphere in which Donald Trump and his allies continue to lash out at officials who have ruled against parts of the president’s agenda.

Josh Marcus reports from San Francisco.

Elsewhere on the president’s social media platform overnight, he has continued to rage about “radical left judges” ruling against his executive orders, again singling out District Judge James Boasberg, this time going so far as to accuse him of “doing everything in his power to usurp the power of the presidency.”

He has also been pressuring the Federal Reserve over the cost of living and threatening Tesla vandals with jail.

Donald Trump has denied claims in a New York Times report that Elon Musk is scheduled to receive a Pentagon briefing Friday about the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China – after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed the tech billionaire’s visit.

In a post on Truth Social late on Thursday, Trump said: “China will not even be mentioned or discussed” during the Pentagon meeting.

“The Fake News is at it again, this time the Failing New York Times. They said, incorrectly, that Elon Musk is going to the Pentagon tomorrow to be briefed on any potential ‘war with China,’” he said.

“’How ridiculous?’ China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!”

Musk in turn has replied to Trump’s post by calling The NYT “pure propaganda”.

Jesse Watters has been widely ridiculed after listing his five “rules for men” — a list that includes no milkshakes and no soup.

The Fox News host was responding to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s claim on Gavin Newsom’s podcast that MAGA focused on his masculinity “obsessively” during the 2024 presidential election.

“I have rules for men,” Watters began on Wednesday’sThe Five.

Rhian Lubin has the story.

John Bowden reports from Washington, D.C.