TVG Daily Brief 24 MAR 2025

24 MAR 2025

Stay informed and ahead of the curve with today’s top headlines, breaking stories, and the latest updates shaping our world. Get the BLUF (bottom line up front!) on defense, national security, economy, business development, technology, American manufacturing, school safety, 2A issues - and more. Prep for the whiplash and stay engaged. Know better - do better. Be the somebody!

DEFENSE

-Trump's Pentagon chief slams judge for halting transgender ban: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth joined the mounting criticism of federal judges by President Donald Trump and others in his administration on Saturday, mocking the judge who blocked a ban on transgender troops in the U.S. military and suggesting she had exceeded her authority. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington ruled that Trump's January 27 executive order, one of several issued by the Republican president targeting legal rights for transgender Americans, likely violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. (Reuters)

· Hegseth in a post on social media platform X mockingly called the judge "Commander Reyes" and suggested she was abusing her power by making decisions about warfighting. "Since 'Judge' Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids," Hegseth wrote. "After that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare."

-Hegseth to fly to the Philippines and Japan in first visit to Asian treaty allies at odds with China: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to visit the Philippines, the first stop in his first trip to Asia next week, for talks that will include increasing deterrence against aggression in the disputed South China Sea, a Philippine official said Friday. Hegseth will be in Manila on March 28-29 to meet his Philippine counterpart, Gilberto Teodoro, and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Talks will touch on increasingly assertive actions by Beijing in the South China Sea and “more significant support” to Philippine security forces by the Trump administration, Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. Jose Manuel Romualdez told The Associated Press. (AP)

· In the U.S., chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell later said Hegseth will visit Hawaii to meet civilian and military leaders in the Indo-Pacific Command then tour U.S. military facilities in Guam and receive briefings on capabilities before flying to the Philippines and Japan.

· Hegseth would “advance security objectives with Philippine leaders and meet with U.S. and Philippine forces. In Japan, he would participate in a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and meet with Japanese leaders and U.S. military forces, Parnell said and added without elaborating that ”as always, the secretary looks forward to some great PT (physical training) with the troops!”

· “These engagements will drive ongoing efforts to strengthen our alliances and partnerships toward our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific,” he said. The trip “comes as the United States builds on unprecedented cooperation with like-minded countries to strengthen regional security.”

-Hegseth beefs up Middle East warship presence with 2 aircraft carriers: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a rare move, is beefing up the Navy warship presence in the Middle East, ordering two aircraft carriers to be there next month as the U.S. increases strikes on the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, according to a U.S. official. It will be the second time in six months that the U.S. has kept two carrier strike groups in that region, with generally only one there. Prior to that, it had been years since the U.S. had committed that much warship power to the Middle East. (AP)

· According to the official, Hegseth signed orders on Thursday to keep the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Middle East for at least an additional month. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing military operations. The ship has been conducting operations in the Red Sea against the Houthis and was scheduled to begin heading home to Norfolk, Virginia, at the end of March. And Hegseth has ordered the carrier Carl Vinson, which has been operating in the Pacific, to begin steaming toward the Middle East, which will extend its scheduled deployment by three months.

-Navy deploys additional warship to curb illegal immigration, drug smuggling at the southern border: The Navy on Saturday announced another destroyer has been sent to the southern border to aid in the ongoing maritime efforts to curb illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Navy officials said the USS Spruance, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, departed Naval Base San Diego Saturday to support southern border operations. The goal of the mission is to restore territorial integrity at the U.S. southern border, according to a statement from the Navy. (Fox News)

· Spruance will enhance maritime efforts, support interagency collaboration and contribute to a coordinated and robust response to combating maritime-related terrorism, weapons proliferation, transnational crime, piracy, environmental destruction and illegal seaborne immigration, according to the statement.

· “USS Spruance’s deployment as part of U.S. Northern Command’s southern border mission brings additional capability and expands the geography of unique military capabilities working with the Department of Homeland Security,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot, USNORTHCOM commander.

· He added that with Spruance off the West Coast and the USS Gravely, a recently deployed destroyer in the Gulf of America, the Navy's maritime presence "contributes to the all-domain, coordinated DOD response to the Presidential Executive Order and demonstrates our resolve to achieve operational control of the border."

-Pentagon Launches Probe Including Polygraphs After Musk Visit: The Pentagon has initiated an investigation incorporating polygraph tests to hunt down leakers after Elon Musk called for the prosecution of any Defense Department officials spreading “maliciously false information” about his dealings with the military. (Bloomberg)

· China Briefing Rumored: The investigation responds to accusations surrounding Musk’s recent visit to the Pentagon, which sparked controversy over a reported top secret briefing about the US military’s planning for a potential war with China. Both Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth denied there were ever any plans for Musk to get such a high-level briefing.

-One of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen remembers struggle for recognition amid Trump's DEI purge: With members of a trailblazing Black Air Force unit passing away at advanced ages, efforts to remain true to their memory carry on despite sometimes confusing orders from President Donald Trump as he purges federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Col. James H. Harvey III, 101, is among the last few airmen and support crew who proved that a Black unit — the 332nd Fighter Group of the Tuskegee Airmen — could fight as well as any other in World War II and the years after. (AP)

· He went on to become the first Black jet fighter pilot in Korean airspace during the Korean War, and a decorated one after 126 missions. He was one of four Tuskegee Airmen who won the first U.S. Air Force Gunnery Meet in 1949, a forerunner of today’s U.S. Navy “Top Gun” school. “They said we didn’t have any ability to operate aircraft or operate heavy machinery. We were inferior to the white man. We were nothing,” Harvey said. “So we showed them.”

· Shortly after Trump's January inauguration, the Air Force removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen. The removal drew bipartisan outrage and the White House’s ire over what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “malicious implementation” of Trump's executive order.

· Announcing the reversal, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a statement that the initial removal was because the service, like other agencies, had to move swiftly to comply with Trump’s executive order with “no equivocation, no slow-rolling, no foot-dragging.” The videos were shown to troops as part of DEI courses taken during basic military training. Some photos of Tuskegee Airmen were also among tens of thousands of images in a Pentagon database flagged for removal.

· “I thought there was progress in that area, but evidently there isn't," said Harvey, who blamed Trump for contributing to what he sees as worsening prejudice in the U.S. “I’ll tell him to his face. No problem," he said. “I’ll tell him, ‘You’re a racist,’ and see what he has to say about that. What can they do to me? Just kill me, that’s all.”

-Banned Books, School Walkouts, Child Care Shortages: Military Families Confront Pentagon's Shifting Rules: "We Will Not Be Silent," read one sign. "Our Education Is Not a Threat," read another. Both messages were lofted by high school students, part of a group of roughly 100 who had walked out of their high school in Germany this month to protest books being banned and class courses being scrapped. At a public school, the protest might have led to a detention and maybe some revoked after-school privileges. But on a military base, the students were putting more on the line. The same officials in charge of their Department of Defense-run school also had authority over their parents' careers and status in the military. (Military.com)

· “I knew my risk, but I was comfortable making the decision to do it because of what I felt was right,” said one of the students, a junior who spoke to Military.com on condition of anonymity for fear of punishment—such as losing their family’s Status of Forces Agreement sponsorship. The students’ daily lives, as well as those of their families, are directly and deeply shaped by Pentagon orders and the U.S. government’s funding.

· Since President Donald Trump took office again in January, a flurry of White House dictums have caused widespread confusion at military bases stateside and abroad, affecting everything from books in the library and classroom lessons to potential staffing at child day care centers and hiring freezes for jobs that military spouses rely on to supplement their service members’ income.

· Parents say those changes, often driven by political decisions in Washington, are harming their family lives and are ultimately dangerous to military readiness and even future recruitment of their children, who historically make up one of the most fertile grounds for the services to reap.

-Child care, teaching positions safe from DOD civilian hiring freeze: Military child care centers and Department of Defense schools are allowed to continue hiring workers with their exemptions from the civilian hiring freeze, according to Pentagon personnel officials. (Military Times)

· In a memorandum released Wednesday outlining exemptions, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Jules W. Hurst III listed several quality-of-life programs among them. That includes child and youth programs staff, as well as instructors or facility support staff at child care centers and Department of Defense Education Activity schools. While positions at the DOD school level are exempt, it’s not clear how far beyond that the exemptions will go.

· The memorandum also lists “installation positions that support and are essential for fire, life and safety,” as being exempt. Information was not immediately available from DOD about how far those exemptions might extend beyond police and fire. It’s not clear, for example, whether commissaries are included as being exempt from the hiring freeze.

· The military services for several years have been working to build up the staffs of their child care centers, as part of an effort to increase the availability of child care for military families. They’ve increased salaries and benefits to attract more employees.

-Internal email highlights how CDAO is responding to DOGE-inspired workforce reduction campaign: Officials leading the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and AI Office are exploring possible exemptions to the ongoing hiring freeze that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently instituted as part of a broader effort to shrink the department’s civilian workforce, according to an internal unclassified email obtained by DefenseScoop. (DefenseScoop)

· Margie Palmieri, the longtime senior CDAO official who’s temporarily heading the office until the Trump administration names a new chief, sent an email to her colleagues Thursday that provides insight into how implementation of President Donald Trump’s DOGE directive across the federal government is impacting the military’s artificial intelligence hub.

-Air Force, Navy Warn Troops About Political Speech Amid Trump Administration Changes: New memos from the Air Force and the Navy warn troops to watch their political speech online and in person, and even mentioned Uniform Code of Military Justice violations for certain criticisms of the president or their superior officers. "The 1st Amendment protects freedom of speech and permits the expression of ideas for all Americans," Acting Air Force Secretary Gary Ashworth wrote in a March 17 memo. "Service members, owing to their critical role in our national security and the duties and obligations of service, have accepted limits on their freedom of expression." (Military.com)

· Military legal experts who spoke to Military.com find the mentions of potential UCMJ crimes to be somewhat unusual and even threatening to troops who likely don't have much to worry about when speaking about their personal experiences and beliefs.

· Both the Air Force and Navy memos highlight several UCMJ violations including Article 88, a rarely charged offense that outlaws "contempt against officials" such as the president, defense secretary, Congress and other officials. Both memos also warn of violations such as Article 92 on failure to obey an order or regulation; Article 133 on conduct unbecoming an officer; and Article 134 on disorders and neglects to the prejudice of good order and discipline.

· "I think this message is troubling and vaguely threatening. It's clearly been reviewed by an attorney, but it's not giving an objective picture on the regulations surrounding free speech," one current Air Force judge advocate general, who spoke under condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told Military.com. "Its mention of criminal charges for disrespectful speech is also without helpful context."

-Boeing wins contract for NGAD fighter jet, dubbed F-47: The Pentagon has awarded the long-awaited contract for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance future fighter jet, known as NGAD, to Boeing, President Donald Trump announced Friday. The sixth-generation fighter, which will replace the F-22 Raptor, will be designated the F-47, Trump said. It will have “state-of-the-art stealth technologies [making it] virtually unseeable,” and will fly alongside multiple autonomous drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft. (Military Times)

-National Guard appeals to anti-corporate Gen Z in new commercial: Gen Zers, born between 1997 and 2012, came into a fast-changing and sometimes uncertain world, but as they have reached adulthood this decade, they’ve made one thing clear: they don’t want to be stuck in a 9-to-5 grind. And the Army thinks they have an “uncommon” job for them. (Task & Purpose)

· Like millennials, Gen Z can’t afford to buy a house or have human children so they opt for cats and dogs and have numerous side hustles. They are always online, inundated by new technology but still yearn for the past and sometimes swear off smartphones altogether.

· They want flexible careers and to feel like what they’re doing matters. So the Army heard that and said: come join the National Guard.

· To reach them, the service has produced a new marketing series titled “Uncommon Is Calling,” pitching the National Guard as a chance for an “uncommon” life where one day you can be punching numbers into a corporate spreadsheet and the next day flying a Black Hawk helicopter on a search and rescue mission, responding to a town devastated by a flood or shipping off to a combat zone.

· “Who are you not to be uncommon? Who are you not to be one in a million? 100 million?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Your day job is what you do, but it doesn’t define you. In a world of common, it might.” The commercial ends by promising that a job with the National Guard will help “discover the most uncommon time of your life.”

· Brig. Gen. Antoinette Gant, chief of Army enterprise marketing told Task & Purpose that the commercial is marketing a career and lifestyle that Gen Zers want: to be entrepreneurial and have multiple gigs or a job with a side hustle and “do something that’s greater than just think about themselves.”

-Ukraine, US teams hold talks in Saudi Arabia, US envoy hopeful on ending war: Ukrainian and U.S. delegations discussed on Sunday proposals to protect energy facilities and critical infrastructure, Ukraine's defence minister said, part of a diplomatic push by U.S. President Donald Trump to end three years of war. The meeting in Saudi Arabia, which precedes talks on Monday between the U.S. and Russian delegations, came as U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about the chances for ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two. (Reuters)

· “I feel that (Russian President Vladimir Putin) wants peace,” Witkoff told Fox News on Sunday. “I think that you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that, you’ll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire.”

· Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country’s delegation to Sunday’s talks was working in “a completely constructive manner”, adding: “The conversation is quite useful, the work of the delegations is continuing. “But no matter what we say to our partners today, we need to get Putin to give a real order to stop the strikes,” Zelenskiy said in a televised statement.

· Ukraine’s delegation was headed by Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who said the aim of such contacts was helping to “bring a just peace closer and to strengthen security”, though Zelenskiy also said Sunday’s talks were essentially “technical".

-US delegation aims for Black Sea ceasefire in Ukraine, Russia talks: A U.S. delegation will seek progress toward a Black Sea ceasefire and a broader cessation of violence in the war in Ukraine when it meets for talks with Russian officials on Monday, after discussions with diplomats from Ukraine on Sunday. The so-called technical talks come as U.S. President Donald Trump intensifies his drive for a halt to Russia's three-year-old assault against Ukraine. Last week, he spoke with both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Reuters)

· A source briefed on the planning for the talks said the U.S. side was being led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and Michael Anton, a senior State Department official. They met the Ukrainians on Sunday night and plan to sit down with the Russians on Monday. The White House says the aim of the talks is to reach a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, allowing the free flow of shipping.

· White House national security adviser Mike Waltz told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the U.S., Russian and Ukrainian delegations were assembled in the same facility in Riyadh. Beyond a Black Sea ceasefire, he said, the teams will discuss “the line of control” between the two countries, which he described as “verification measures, peacekeeping, freezing the lines where they are.” He said “confidence-building measures” are being discussed, including the return of Ukrainian children taken by Russia.

-US says kills "key" Houthi leaders in Yemen strikes: A U.S. military campaign of strikes in Yemen launched just over a week ago has so far taken out key Houthi leadership, including the group's top missile specialist, White House National Security Adviser Mike Waltz said on Sunday. The U.S. military has so far released few details about the operations, launched after Houthi threats to renew its attacks on Red Sea shipping over the war in Gaza. "We've hit their headquarters, we've hit communications nodes, weapons factories, and even some of their over-the-water drone production facilities," Waltz told CBS News. Waltz did not identify the slain missile specialist and gave no details on the other leaders who have been killed. (Reuters)

-Trump's offer of talks with Iran aims to avoid military action, US envoy says: U.S. President Donald Trump's outreach to Iran's top authority, Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on a possible new nuclear deal is an effort to avoid military action, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday. "We don't need to solve everything militarily," Witkoff told Fox News. "Our signal to Iran is let's sit down and see if we can, through dialogue, through diplomacy, get to the right place. If we can, we are prepared to do that. And if we can't, the alternative is not a great alternative." (Reuters)

· Speaking separately on CBS News, the White House's national security advisor, Mike Waltz, said the U.S. sought "full dismantlement" of Iran's nuclear program. "Iran has to give up its program in a way that the entire world can see," he said. "As President Trump has said, this is coming to a head. All options are on the table and it is time for Iran to walk away completely from its desire to have a nuclear weapon."

-The US lifts bounties on senior Taliban officials, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, says Kabul: The U.S. has lifted bounties on three senior Taliban figures, including the interior minister who also heads a powerful network blamed for bloody attacks against Afghanistan’s former Western-backed government, officials in Kabul said Sunday. Sirajuddin Haqqani, who acknowledged planning a January 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul, which killed six people, including U.S. citizen Thor David Hesla, no longer appears on the State Department’s Rewards for Justice website. The FBI website on Sunday still featured a wanted poster for him. (AP)

· Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qani said the U.S. government had revoked the bounties placed on Haqqani, Abdul Aziz Haqqani, and Yahya Haqqani. “These three individuals are two brothers and one paternal cousin,” Qani told The Associated Press.

· A Foreign Ministry official, Zakir Jalaly, said the Taliban’s release of U.S. prisoner George Glezmann on Friday and the removal of bounties showed both sides were “moving beyond the effects of the wartime phase and taking constructive steps to pave the way for progress” in bilateral relations. “The recent developments in Afghanistan-U.S. relations are a good example of the pragmatic and realistic engagement between the two governments,” said Jalaly.

-US delegation to visit Greenland as Trump talks of takeover: A high-profile U.S. delegation will visit Greenland this week to visit an American military base and watch a dogsled race as President Donald Trump promotes the idea of a U.S. annexation of the strategic, semi-autonomous Danish territory. Usha Vance, wife of Vice President JD Vance, will lead the delegation that includes White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. (Reuters)

· Waltz and Wright plan to visit the Pituffik space base, the U.S. military base in Greenland. The White House said they will get briefings from U.S. service members there. They will then join Vance to visit historical sites and attend the national dogsled race.

· Brian Hughes, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said the U.S. team is “confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland's self determination and advances economic cooperation." "This is a visit to learn about Greenland, its culture, history, and people and to attend a dogsled race the United States is proud to sponsor, plain and simple," Hughes said.

-Defense and veterans hearings on Capitol Hill for the week of March 24, 2025: (Military Times)

Monday, March 24

House Veterans' Affairs — 3 p.m. — 360 Cannon

· Community Providers | VA officials and outside advocates will testify on ways to improve interoperability between department clinics and community health care providers.

Tuesday, March 25

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — 2200 Rayburn

· African Resources | Outside experts will testify on Chinese involvement in Africa.

House Foreign Affairs — 10 a.m. — 2172 Rayburn

· State Department Administrative Services | Outside experts will testify on ways to streamline State Department operations.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10 a.m. — Dirksen 419

· Pending nominations | The committee will consider several pending nominations.

House Veterans’ Affairs — 10:15 a.m. — 360 Cannon

· VA Transition Assistance | VA officials and outside advocates will testify on ways to improve transition services for individuals leaving the military.

House Veterans’ Affairs — 2:15 p.m. — 360 Cannon

· Pending Legislation | The subcommittee on health will consider several pending bills.

Senate Armed Services — 2:30 p.m. — 222 Russell

· Conventional Surface Shipbuilding | Vice Adm. James Downey, head of Naval Sea Systems Command, will testify on current shipbuilding goals and challenges.

Senate Armed Services — 3:30 p.m. — 232-A Russell

· AI Cyber Capabilities | Outside experts will testify on potential uses of artificial intelligence for the defense community.

House Armed Services — 3:30 p.m. — 2116 Rayburn

· Transportation Command | Gen. Randall Reed, head of U.S. Transportation Command, will testify on fiscal 2026 budget needs.

Wednesday, March 26

Senate Armed Services — 9:30 a.m. — 106 Dirksen

· Strategic and Space Command | Gen. Anthony Cotton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, and Gen. Stephen Whiting, head of U.S. Space Command, will testify on fiscal 2026 budget needs.

House Select Intelligence — 10 a.m. — 1100 Longworth

· Worldwide Threats Assessment |Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel will testify on threats facing America.

Senate Foreign Relations — 10 a.m. — 419 Dirksen

· Indo-Pacific Alliances | Outside experts will testify on U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.

House Veterans' Affairs — 10:15 a.m. — 360 Cannon

· Pending Legislation | The subcommittee on disability assistance will consider several pending bills.

Senate Armed Services — 2:30 p.m. — 222 Russell

· Military Service Academies | Superintendents from the three service academies will testify on current operations and challenges.

House Armed Services — 3:30 p.m. — 2118 Rayburn

· Special Operations Forces | Colby Jenkins, acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, and Gen. Bryan Fenton, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, will testify on fiscal 2026 budget needs.

Thursday, March 27

Senate Foreign Relations — 11 a.m. — Capitol S-116

· Pending Business | The committee will consider several pending bills.

VETERANS

-Lawmakers push to end ‘double-dipping’ ban that keeps combat-wounded veterans from accessing full benefits: Lawmakers are pushing again to overturn a federal law that stops combat-injured veterans with less than 20 years of service from collecting their full retirement pay when they qualify for disability compensation. The Richard Star Act would restore full benefits to approximately 53,000 service members forced to retire medically due to the severity of injuries incurred in combat. (Stars and Stripes)

· Under existing law, these veterans are denied full pensions from the Defense Department if they opt to receive disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs. They must waive a portion of their retirement pay equal to the amount of their disability compensation from the VA. The legislation did not advance to a final vote in fiscal 2024 over cost concerns, but it is drawing unusual bipartisan support from key lawmakers, even as the administration of President Donald Trump makes sweeping cuts to federal programs.

· “I don’t imagine this will be on anyone’s priority list given the cutbacks going on in government,” said Marine Corps veteran Adam Kisielewski, a sergeant from Maryland who was medically retired in 2006 after suffering life-threatening injuries in a bomb blast in Iraq. “I’m glad the country is operating in a fiscally responsible manner but taking care of our country’s veterans is critically important too.” Kisielewski’s left arm and right leg below the knee were amputated in a series of operations. He was 21 years old at the time.

· “This legislation makes a critical change to treat our veterans fairly and support our nation’s heroes. I urge my colleagues to support its quick passage,” said Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., one of the sponsors who reintroduced the legislation in the Senate last week. A hearing on the bill has yet to be scheduled. Scott said the legislation’s passage allows for combat-wounded veterans who retired with less than 20 years of service to receive their pensions plus disability pay concurrently, which “they rightfully earned.”

· Implementation of the Richard Star Act would cost more than $7 billion through 2033 in direct spending on military retirees, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But “rules against double dipping” from federal funding sources are keeping veterans permanently disabled from combat injuries from receiving their full retirement pay and disability benefits, a 2023 report by the National Institutes of Health concluded.

· The Wounded Warrior Project, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other veterans services organizations said they are making the bill’s passage a legislative priority in 2025. The bill has collected 187 sponsors in the House and 48 in the Senate. “This measure corrects one of the deepest injustices in our present veterans’ disability system,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and one of the bill’s sponsors.

-V.A. Workers See Chaos in Services For Mental Care: Late in February, as the Trump administration ramped up its quest to transform the federal government, a psychiatrist who treats veterans was directed to her new workstation -- and was incredulous. She was required, under a new return-to-office policy, to conduct virtual psychotherapy with her patients from one of 13 cubicles in a large open office space, the kind of setup used for call centers. Other staff might overhear the sessions, or appear on the patient's screen as they passed on their way to the bathroom and break room. (NYT)

· The psychiatrist was stunned. Her patients suffered from disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Treating them from her home office, it had taken many months to earn their trust. This new arrangement, she said, violated a core ethical tenet of mental health care: the guarantee of privacy.

· When the doctor asked how she was expected to safeguard patient privacy, a supervisor suggested she purchase privacy screens and a white noise machine. ''I'm ready to walk away if it comes to it,'' she wrote to her manager, in a text message shared with The New York Times. ''I get it,'' the manager replied. ''Many of us are ready to walk away.''

· Scenes like this have been unfolding in Veterans Affairs facilities across the country in recent weeks, as therapy and other mental health services have been thrown into turmoil amid the dramatic changes ordered by President Trump and pushed by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

· Among the most consequential orders is the requirement that thousands of mental health providers, including many who were hired for fully remote positions, now work full time from federal office space. This is a jarring policy reversal for the V.A., which pioneered the practice of virtual health care two decades ago as a way to reach isolated veterans, long before the pandemic made telehealth the preferred mode of treatment for many Americans.

· As the first wave of providers reports to offices where there is simply not enough room to accommodate them, many found no way to ensure patient privacy, health workers said. Some have filed complaints, warning that the arrangement violates ethics regulations and medical privacy laws. At the same time, layoffs of at least 1,900 probationary employees are thinning out already stressed services that assist veterans who are homeless or suicidal.

· In more than three dozen interviews, current and recently terminated mental health workers at the V.A. described a period of rapid, chaotic behind-the-scenes change. Many agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because they want to continue to serve veterans, and feared retribution from the Trump administration.

· Clinicians warn that the changes will degrade mental health treatment at the V.A., which already has severe staffing shortages. Some expect to see a mass exodus of sought-after specialists, like psychiatrists and psychologists. They expect wait times to increase, and veterans to eventually seek treatment outside the agency.

-A post-mortem showed his veteran son had scarring on his brain. Now the grieving father is fighting for change: Decorated Navy SEAL Ryan Larkin's death was put down to mental illness, but his father — once a SEAL himself — didn't buy it. With four decades of government service behind him, Frank Larkin started hunting for answers after his son's suicide. Larkin suspected his son's military service resulted in an invisible brain injury, a kind of wound not yet known to science. "Ryan died from his combat injuries from his service to this nation," Frank Larkin said. "He just didn't die right away." (CBS News)

· Ryan Larkin was 13 in September 2001 when his dad was assigned to the New York Secret Service Office, located across the street from the World Trade Center. His dad was on the ground in New York City on 9/11 and got caught in the turmoil. “And he had witnessed that from a hillside west of the city, a town that we lived in in New Jersey. And, you know, it emotionally impacted him. I didn’t realize how much,” Frank Larkin said. Ryan Larkin joined the Navy out of high school and became a SEAL. He served on four combat tours: two in Iraq and two in Afghanistan.

· One stretch — in Iraq, then Afghanistan with only two weeks off between — lasted about a year. Frank Larkin noticed something was wrong with his son after that deployment. Ryan had returned home from the wars to become an instructor teaching urban combat to other SEALS, a move that was considered a stepping-stone to promotion.

· “He became short fused. You know, he stopped laughing, which was a key sign,” Frank Larkin said. “He became very stoic in his facial expression. I would almost characterize it as putting a mask on where at times he would get into this, you know, mode where he was almost looking right through you.”

· Navy doctors scanned Ryan Larkin’s brain, but they saw no physical injury. He was in-and-out of the hospital being treated for depression and alcoholism. “But at no point had they ever settled on a clinical diagnosis as to what was wrong with him. And it just, it just tore him apart,” Frank Larkin said. “He said to me, ‘Dad, I don’t feel like I’m in my own body.’”

· In August 2016, Ryan Larkin wrote to the Navy. “I need help,” he wrote. “I just want to feel normal again and live a purposeful life. I loved being a SEAL.” Ryan Larkin received an honorable discharge that year and was released from a Navy medical center with an illness no one could correctly diagnose. He told his father that if anything happened to him, he wanted his body and brain donated to science for traumatic brain injury research.

· It was April 2017 when Frank Larkin and his wife found their son's body. Ryan was just 29. "I've spent over 40 years of my life rescuing other people," Frank Larkin said. "And in the end, I couldn't rescue my own son."

· The Larkins donated their son's brain to Dr. Daniel Perl at the Uniformed Services University, the military's medical school. 60 Minutes met Dr. Perl in 2017 after his post-mortem examinations discovered microscopic scars in the brains of veterans who had taken their own lives. Depression overwhelmed them months or years after the enormous blast of a roadside bomb. "And with the explosion comes the formation of something called the blast wave," Perl told 60 Minutes. "And it is sufficiently powerful to pass through the skull and through the brain."

· Perl found scarring in Ryan Larkin's brain, but there was one big difference: Ryan had not been hit by a roadside bomb. Most of what he endured was low-level, repeated shocks from his own weapons, like a large caliber rifle notorious for leaving gunners dizzy. His job as a trainer after he returned from overseas also contributed; Students came and went, but Ryan Larkin supervised every blast, every raid, every day. Perl found similar results in the brains of other Navy SEALS who later took their own lives.

-Veterans’ advocates say VA staffing cuts put vets out of work: Staffing cuts in the federal Department of Veterans Affairs are disproportionately affecting the veterans that the department preferentially hires, said members of a South Dakota veterans’ advocacy group. They worry the Trump administration’s goal of cutting 80,000 VA employees will put more veterans out of work without a vetting process, and erode the quality of services provided. (South Dakota Searchlight)

· Eugene Murphy, of Sioux Falls, is a past national commander of Disabled American Veterans and a Vietnam War vet who was paralyzed by gunshot wounds. “How are you going to treat my brothers and sisters like that?” he said. “This is not right.”

· The VA provides services for veterans including health care, housing options, life insurance, pensions, education stipends and more. One-quarter of the VA’s 482,000 employees are veterans .

· Disabled American Veterans of South Dakota says the Trump administration’s initial round of cuts to probationary employees disproportionately impacted disabled veterans . The national organization shared testimonials on its website of some of the disabled and decorated veterans who have already been fired.

· “I found out I lost my job off the clock, on my day off, without a warning, without a meeting, without even a termination letter,” said Navy veteran Kara Oliver, of Michigan. “Just a locked computer screen and a stunned supervisor confirming the news. And here’s the worst part: The veterans lost more than I did.”

-Sturgis military event reveals division among SD veterans: An event hosted by Congressman Dusty Johnson to honor Vietnam veterans in Sturgis this week unwittingly revealed the growing division among some veterans in South Dakota and beyond. As Johnson told those assembled inside he wanted to make up for poor treatment of veterans in the 1960s and 1970s, a group of people outside the Sturgis Veteran’s Club protested how veterans are being treated now by the Trump administration and Congress. (South Dakota News Watch)

· On the sidewalk outside the club, a dozen people carried signs and chanted slogans. The protesters, including some former military members, said widespread employee cuts in the Department of Veterans Affairs are weakening health care for veterans.

· Inside the club, a few dozen people gathered for the ceremony led by Johnson, a third-term Republican. He started the event by lamenting how poorly many Vietnam veterans were treated upon returning home after their service.

· “America is the best country in the world, but that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect,” said Johnson. “If you needed to point to a piece of evidence of that imperfection, one place to start would be how we treated people in uniform in the 1960s and 1970s.”

· Johnson said that has changed over time and that American military personnel and veterans are now treated with far more respect and reverence and that “they’re more likely to get a round of applause than they are to get spit on.”

-Veterans who love the VA hope cuts don’t disable agency in Pittsburgh: About 15 years ago, Tony Indovina became perturbed by the sight of a stopwatch at a dermatology appointment — a stark reminder that efficiency seemed to outweigh personal care. Not long after, a doctor suggested he consider seeking care through Veterans Affairs instead. Indovina’s service as a reserve officer and a year spent in Vietnam made him eligible, so he decided to try it. The quality of care he received there in comparison to the private sector shocked him. (Public Source)

· “I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten follow-up phone calls, oftentimes in the evening or weekends, from these doctors just to follow up and ask how I’m doing with this or that prescription that’s been given to me or whatever issue I might present,” Indovina said.

· The 79-year-old Greenfield resident still loves and uses the VA. The recent announcement of cuts to the VA by the federal government concerns Indovina. His background as a retired public school counselor makes him especially attuned to the risks of privatizing a public service, which he sees as the end goal of these cuts.

· “Over the years, I’ve elected some specialized care when I’ve needed to, less and less, but through UPMC, through my private insurance, and there’s no comparison with the time and attention that you get through the VA,” Indovina said. “So that’s really what I think a lot of us really hold dear about VA services. They really do deliver the commitment to providing top service to vets, and that’s what we’re most afraid of [losing] with what’s going on now.”

-Wyoming's Wild Horses And Military Veterans Ease Each Others’ PTSD: Most humans spend a lot of time thinking about the past and worrying about the future. But for a veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the percentage of brain power that’s devoted to that task becomes all-consuming. To the point it becomes hard to function at all. “I wasn’t sleeping, Wyoming veteran Kelly Alexander told Cowboy State Daily. “They were juicing me up with narcotics that were too strong for me. And, nothing against the VA, they’re only doing what they’re trained to do. But on my end, it was really bad. Things were pretty dark.” (Cowboy State Daily)

· Alexander is an Army veteran with 20 years of service, including tours of duty in Afghanistan, who now lives near Lusk. After he was diagnosed with PTSD, he tried everything the VA had to offer. That included programs about “being present and grounded” as well as medications to help with anxiety.

· But his big breakthrough didn’t come from a VA program at all. It came from a horse. And not just any horse. A wild horse. A horse that had never trusted a human in its very young life. Alexander met this spirited horse down in Texas as part of an eight-week program to pair mustangs with veterans and teach them both to simmer down.

· The program is the only one like it that Alexander had been able to find, and today, it no longer exists. But it helped him so much, he’s been recreating his own version in Wyoming. It’s called Operation Remount Corp., and it is coming to life on a ranch he and his wife Karen, bought in the tiny town of Jay Em, with a population of 12 people, not too far from Lusk.

-Former President Bush, Gov. Abbott salute Medal of Honor recipients at Arlington museum opening: Arlington’s Entertainment District is no stranger to spectacles. Super Bowls, World Series and mega concerts are standard procedure. Presidential motorcades and Secret Service, however, are less common. The fireworks that boomed over the city’s newest point of pride on March 22 flared extra bright, shedding red, white and blue sparks on the politicians, celebrities and community members who gathered to celebrate the ribbon cutting at the National Medal of Honor Museum. (KERA)

· Those in attendance included former President George W. Bush, Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott and singer Lee Greenwood, but none of those big names owned the spotlight. The night celebrated the more than 3,500 recipients of the Medal of Honor, America’s highest military decoration for valor in combat, whose names are engraved in the 100,000-square-foot museum.

· “It’s as humbling as it gets tonight,” said Capt. Florent “Flow” Groberg, a Medal recipient recognized for his actions as a Task Force Mountain Warrior in Afghanistan in 2012. Groberg was one of the about 40 recipients attending the ceremony. “I want this museum to be a clear reminder of what it took and continues to take to be this country,” Groberg said. “These are storylines of ordinary, common Americans who rose to the question of: ‘Will you serve?’”

-Secretary Hegseth must obtain justice for Iraq war veterans: March 25 is officially designated as Medal of Honor Day in the United States. The day provides an opportunity to pay tribute to the bravest of the brave in our armed forces— the more than 3,400 recipients of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War through today: Men who have “distinguished [themselves] conspicuously at the risk of [their] life above and beyond the call of duty.” (Washington Times op-ed | James C. Roberts is executive chairman of the American Veterans Center.)

· This Medal of Honor Day will also provide an occasion to focus on a glaring problem in the Medal’s award process and prompt the Pentagon leadership to address it. The problem is the injustice done to the Iraq War veterans.

· To provide context, here are the statistics of Medal of Honor award presentations by major conflict since President Abraham Lincoln authorized the award of the Medal in 1861: The Civil War: 1,523; World War 1: 124; World War 11: 464; the Korean War: 136; Vietnam War: 247; Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan): 20, five posthumous, 15 to living veterans; Operation Iraqi Freedom: seven.

· The glaring anomaly is instantly apparent: only seven Medals of Honor for valor in Iraq. And of the seven medal recipients, only one is living. Army staff sergeant David Bellavia was finally given the Medal of Honor in 2019 — 15 years after the action for which he was honored.

· This is a major injustice. More than 1.5 million men and women served in combat in Iraq, in a conflict that lasted almost a decade and in which 32,226 service men and women were injured and 4,487 were killed in action.

· So why is there a paucity of Medals of Honor for the veterans of Iraq? In November, Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq during the “surge,” was asked this question at an Army and Navy Club event. His cryptic answer: “We screwed up.” He didn’t specify who, how or why. Those are questions that need to be answered. The proper way to find those answers and redress this injustice is for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to establish a hand-picked military commission.

· Such commissions have been established periodically by past Secretaries of Defense and have rectified past omissions by awarding the Medal of Honor to living veterans of World War 11, Korea and Vietnam—sometimes decades after the conflicts involved have ended. It’s not too late to redress the indefensible slighting of our Iraq war veterans in the same way. Secretary Hegseth, the ball is in your court. Now is the time to provide justice for your brothers in uniform.

-I'm an Army veteran. Trump's attempts to erase our history at Arlington sicken me: As a U.S. Army veteran who served from 1992 to 2007, I am compelled to voice my profound dismay over recent actions by the Department of Defense under Secretary Pete Hegseth. The erasure of Medgar Evers – a World War II veteran and civil rights martyr – from the Arlington National Cemetery website is not just an affront to his legacy but a blatant attempt to rewrite history. (USA Today op-ed | Jose Vasquez is a U.S. Army veteran and the executive director of Common Defense.)

· Now, as public outcry mounts, the DOD is claiming that some of the erased content will be reinstated. But let’s be clear: This backtracking does not absolve the harm already done. With this administration’s previous actions, misdirects and outright lies, they no longer get the benefit of the doubt on “mistakes.”

· They are either retreating from these purges because of backlash or because multiple and major mistakes were made, which raises troubling questions about senior administration officials’ competence and error-correction oversight.

· Such decisions are not merely administrative; they are emblematic of a deeper, more insidious attempt to whitewash our military’s history. The contributions of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, Asian American and other minority service members have been integral to our nation’s defense from the very beginning. To erase or diminish their legacy is to perpetuate the very injustices they fought against, both abroad and at home.

· As veterans, we swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and defend the principles of justice and equality. It is our duty to stand against policies that seek to divide and erase.

· Secretary Hegseth’s actions – whether deliberate or using bureaucratic red tape as an excuse – are a disservice to the values we hold dear and to the memory of heroes like Medgar Evers. We must remain vigilant and vocal in preserving the true and inclusive history of our armed forces.

GLOBAL

-Father of the last living American hostage in Gaza hopes Trump can bring his son home: The father of the last living American hostage being held by Hamas in Gaza is hoping that the Trump administration's negotiators can help bring his son home safely. Adi Alexander told The Associated Press on Friday that given the renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, he wonders whether the Israeli government can secure the freedom of his son and is more hopeful about the U.S.'s chances. (AP)

· Twenty-one-year-old Edan Alexander, who grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, before enlisting in the Israeli military, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Last week, Hamas said it would release Edan if Israel recommits to the stalled ceasefire agreement.

-Israeli strike at Gaza hospital kills 5, Israel says target was Hamas militant: An Israeli airstrike at a hospital in Gaza on Sunday killed five people, including a Hamas political leader, Palestinian medics and Hamas said, in an attack Israel said had targeted a key figure in the militant group. The Gaza Health Ministry said the strike hit the surgery department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. The Israeli military said its attack followed extensive intelligence and used precise munitions to minimize harm at the site. (Reuters)

· Palestinian health authorities said Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 50,000 people. At least 50,021 Palestinians have been killed and 113,274 wounded since the beginning of the war, the health ministry said in a statement.

-Israel fires on Lebanon after rocket attack in the heaviest exchange since the truce with Hezbollah: Israel has launched airstrikes on several locations in Lebanon in retaliation for a rocket attack. Israel's strikes Saturday killed six people, in the heaviest exchange of fire since its ceasefire with the militant group Hezbollah began nearly four months ago. Hezbollah denied being responsible for Saturday's rocket attack and said it is committed to the truce. (AP)

· The Israeli army said in a statement that it "cannot confirm the identity of the organization that fired the rockets.” Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza on Saturday. And tens of thousands of Israelis protested the government’s failure to negotiate a hostage deal and its move to fire the head of the country’s internal security service.

-Israel presses ground offensive in Gaza: Israel's military pressed ground operations across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, encircling part of Rafah city near Egypt almost a week into a renewed assault on the Palestinian territory. Deployment of Israeli troops in parts of Gaza, despite calls to revive a January truce with Hamas militants, comes alongside a deadly flare-up in Lebanon and missiles fired from Yemen. Israeli troops on Sunday encircled Tal al-Sultan in Rafah, the military said in a statement, adding its objective was to "dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate" militants there. Earlier on Sunday, Israel had warned residents of the area to evacuate. (AFP)

-Israeli military says division deployed in Lebanon now preparing for Gaza: The Israeli military said on Sunday that one of its divisions that had operated in Lebanon was preparing for possible activity in Gaza. "Following the situational assessment, the 36th Division has begun preparations for operations in the Southern Command. Over the past months, the division has completed operations in Lebanon and several months of operational activity in the northern arena," the military said in a statement. (Reuters)

-Israel intercepts missile launched from Yemen; Houthis claim responsibility: The Israeli military said on Sunday it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen before it crossed into Israeli territory, as escalation between Israel and the Iran-aligned Houthis continue. The Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the group fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement on Sunday. The Houthis' military spokesman also said without providing evidence that the Houthis had launched attacks on Sunday against the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea. (Reuters)

-Israel's security cabinet approves independence for 13 West Bank settlements: Israel's security cabinet approved a plan to separate 13 Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank from their neighbouring communities, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday. The settlements will ultimately be recognised as independent, he posted on X about the move, which follows the approval of tens of thousands of housing units across the West Bank. "We continue to lead a revolution of normalisation and regulation in the settlements. Instead of hiding and apologising – we raise the flag, build and settle. This is another important step on the path to actual sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich said, using Israel's term for the West Bank. (Reuters)

-Netanyahu, Top Aides Believe Israel Must Beat Hamas on the Battlefield: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his new national-security team are planning a major ground offensive in Gaza in the belief that capturing and holding swaths of territory will allow them to finally defeat Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas, according to people familiar with the government's thinking. (WSJ)

· On Sunday, Israel sent infantry into the northern part of the Gaza Strip and areas around Rafah in the south. Israel has also deployed troops in the so-called Netzarim corridor, which bisects the Palestinian enclave, returning to areas it had withdrawn from as part of a cease-fire deal. Israel also has targeted a series of Hamas’s Gaza-based political leaders in recent days. The Defense Ministry said it killed Hamas’s prime minister, Ismail Barhoum, on Sunday, just days after he took up the post following Israel’s killing of his predecessor. Hamas said Sunday that Salah al-Bardawil, a member of its political bureau, had been killed in an airstrike.

· The moves represent the start of a new battle plan. Netanyahu and a hawkish group of top aides appointed in recent months argue that Hamas must be beaten on the battlefield before any political solution for Gaza can be advanced. Previously, defense officials had taken the view that Hamas could be degraded militarily, but that it would be necessary to establish a new governing authority in Gaza to really end Hamas’s influence.

· Netanyahu and his new team, including Defense Minister Israel Katz and top general Eyal Zamir, believe that last year’s military defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Trump administration’s willingness to back a renewed offensive against Hamas give them more latitude to fight. Katz, in a policy shift announced last week, said Israel would gradually seize territory from Gaza as long as Hamas holds on to hostages. “Once you win, things will start to sort themselves out,” said Amir Avivi, a former Israeli military commander.

-Defying protests, Israeli cabinet votes no confidence in attorney general: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved a no confidence motion against the attorney general on Sunday, in its latest move on officials deemed hostile to the government, defying protesters who took to the streets for a sixth day. After the vote, Justice Minister Yariv Levin called on Gali Baharav-Miara to resign, saying "substantial and prolonged differences of opinion" prevented effective cooperation between the government and its chief legal adviser. (Reuters)

-Israel panel approves 2025 budget, set for final vote in parliament by end-March: Israel's parliamentary finance committee late on Sunday approved the 2025 state budget, setting up a final vote by lawmakers before its March 31 deadline to prevent the government's collapse. The committee cleared the long-delayed wartime budget after a 13-hour debate in which opposition members accused the government of a lack of transparency over spending. The Finance Ministry said that these funds are not yet subject to a government decision and therefore do not appear in the budget. (Reuters)

· The total budget will be 756 billion shekels ($203.5 billion), or 620 billion excluding debt servicing for a 21% rise in spending over 2024. The defence budget alone will be a record 110 billion shekels, while the deficit is set at 4.9% of gross domestic product. Israel spent $31 billion on its military conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon in 2024 and the government vowed to sharply boost defence spending going forward. While failure to approve the budget by the end of March would trigger snap elections, it appears there is little chance the government will collapse.

-Gaza killing 'must stop', EU foreign policy chief says in Cairo: The European Union's top diplomat called Sunday for an end to the renewed fighting in Gaza during a stop in Egypt, before setting off for Israel and the Palestinian territories to press for resumption of a Gaza truce. Israel on Tuesday resumed intense air strikes in the Gaza Strip, followed by ground operations, after negotiations with Hamas militants stalled over the next stage in the ceasefire. (AFP)

· "We strongly oppose Israel's resumption of hostilities, which caused appalling loss of life in Gaza. The killing must stop. In a new war, both sides lose," the EU's Kaja Kallas said in Cairo during a press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. "From the European side, it is very clear that Hamas must release all hostages and Israel must fully reinstate humanitarian aid into Gaza and negotiations must resume."

-West Bank Palestinians in 'extremely precarious' situation: MSF: Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced on Monday the "extremely precarious" situation of Palestinians displaced by the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank. According to the United Nations, some 40,000 residents have been displaced since January 21, when the Israeli army launched an operation targeting Palestinian armed groups in the north of the territory. (AFP)

-Turkey sees opening for ‘increased’ strategic engagement with Trump admin: Official: Turkey sees potential for enhanced “bilateral relations” and “increased engagement” with the new Trump administration, the Turkish ambassador to the US said. “Greater convergence and complementarity between Turkey and the United States can make a real difference in addressing” ongoing conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and in Gaza, Sedat Önal said Friday at an event in Washington, DC, put on by the Atlantic Council thinktank. (Breaking Defense)

· Önal noted the US and Ankara already have a diplomatic framework through what’s known as the “strategic mechanism,” but he said officials are hoping to enhance their relationship further. In particular, Önal said Ankara is “looking forward” to working with US officials to remove sanctions so that the two nations can “bolster defense cooperation.”

· “Defense and security cooperation has always been one important dimension of our bilateral relationship, especially under current circumstances, enhanced coordination and solidarity have become all the more important,” he said, adding that Turkish and American officials are “planning new high-level engagements in the near future as two NATO allies.”

· Though Önal did not get into specific areas of interest in defense, Ankara was sanctioned by the US during Trump’s first term in 2020 after it chose to acquire the Russian S-400 air defense system, a move that also prompted Washington to kick Turkey out of the international F-35 program. Another deal for Turkey to procure F-16 jets was also halted for some time, but then unfrozen by the Biden administration.

-Turkey jails Istanbul mayor before trial, stoking opposition anger: A Turkish court on Sunday jailed Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, President Tayyip Erdogan's main political rival, pending trial on corruption charges in a move that inflamed the country's biggest protests in more than a decade. The decision to send Imamoglu to jail comes after the main opposition party, European leaders and hundreds of thousands of protesters criticised the actions against him as politicised and undemocratic. (Reuters)

-Pakistan army says it killed 16 Islamist militants on Afghan border: Pakistan's army has killed 16 Islamist militants along the country's western border with Afghanistan, a statement said on Sunday. It said border troops killed all the militants in an exchange of fire during the night between March 22 and 23 in North Waziristan district. "Own troops effectively engaged and thwarted their attempt to infiltrate," the army statement said. (Reuters)

· Islamabad says that Islamist militants who attack inside Pakistan, and against the army have safe havens in Afghanistan, a charge Kabul denies. The incident took place as Pakistan's Special Representative for Afghanistan Sadiq Khan is on a two-day official visit to Kabul to talk about bilateral and economic issues, a statement from Pakistan's embassy in Kabul said.

-Pakistan charges Baloch activist with 'terrorism': Pakistan on Sunday charged a Baloch rights activist with terrorism, sedition and murder after she led a demonstration which ended in the death of three protesters, according to police documents. Mahrang Baloch, one of Pakistan's most prominent human rights advocates, has long campaigned for the Baloch ethnic group, which claims it has been targeted by Islamabad with harassment and extrajudicial killings. Pakistan has been battling a separatist insurgency in Balochistan for decades, where militants target state forces and foreign nationals in the mineral-rich southwestern province bordering Afghanistan and Iran. (AFP)

-World Leaders Must Say The Magic Word: Thanks: After President Trump spoke on the phone with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine last week, the White House wanted to make one thing clear: The Ukrainian leader was grateful to the American president. Very grateful. The statement recounting the call mentioned four times that Mr. Zelensky had thanked the president for his efforts to negotiate terms of a ceasefire with Russia. It then went on to note that Mr. Zelensky was ''grateful'' for Mr. Trump's leadership. The description revealed a pattern in the Trump administration’s shaping of its foreign policy agenda: When it comes to diplomacy, Mr. Trump wants an implicit or explicit display of personal gratitude from American allies. (NYT)

· Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mr. Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy suggests that he sees aiding U.S. allies as a favor, rather than as a cornerstone of foreign policy that will pay dividends down the road. “That does sort of signal a fundamentally different notion of order than we have had for the last 80 years, which is that while our allies need to step up and do more for their own defense, our support of their defense is also in our interest,'' Mr. Froman said. ''I believe President Trump is questioning that.''

-Ukraine army says recaptured small village in Lugansk region: Ukraine's army said on Sunday its troops have recaptured a tiny village in the eastern Lugansk region, a rare battlefield success for Kyiv's forces in an area that Russia has almost fully captured since invading in 2022. Ukraine's Land Forces said on Telegram it had "liberated the village of Nadia in Lugansk region" in a 30-hour operation that saw it retake three square kilometres (one square mile) of territory. (AFP)

-Hijacking news: Fake media sites sow Ukraine disinformation: A fake news website falsely claimed that Ukraine's president is paying Western reporters to tarnish US President Donald Trump -- part of a series of deceptive reports spread by Russian-linked portals mimicking media outlets. The disinformation tactic, amid heightened international efforts to halt the three-year war with Russia, seeks to undermine both Ukraine and public trust in mainstream media, researchers say. This adds to the increasingly troubling trend of attributing false information to established media brands, illustrating how the news medium is being actively hijacked to advance Ukraine-related disinformation. (AFP)

-Russia's air attack on Kyiv region wounds one, damages houses, Ukrainian official says: Russia launched its third consecutive overnight air attack on Kyiv, wounding one person and damaging several houses in the region surrounding the Ukrainian capital, a Kyiv's regional governor said on Monday. A 37-year-old person received shrapnel wounds in his upper body and head, governor Mykola Kalashnyk said in a post on Telegram messaging app. Late on Sunday, in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, Russia's attack injured a 54-year-old woman and damaged windows of multi-story and residential buildings, the region's administration said on Telegram. (Reuters)

· The attacks came after a Ukrainian delegation met with U.S. officials for peace talks in Saudi Arabia, and ahead of Russia-U.S. talks there on Monday to discuss ways to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea.

-Ukraine says it shot down 57 drones out of 99 launched by Russia overnight: Ukraine's air force said on Monday that it shot down 57 drones out of 99 launched by Russia overnight. Another 36 imitator drones did not reach their targets, it said. It did not specify what happened to the remaining six drones. (Reuters)

-For Russia, Trump Has a Lot to Offer, Even Without a Ukraine Deal: President Trump says he is focused on stopping the “death march” in Ukraine “as soon as possible.” But for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, cease-fire talks with Mr. Trump are a means to much broader ends. Russian and American officials met in Saudi Arabia on Monday to deepen their negotiations about technical details of a partial cease-fire to halt attacks on energy facilities and on ships in the Black Sea. While Ukraine says it’s ready for a full truce, Mr. Putin has made it clear that he will seek a wide range of concessions first. (NYT)

· The upshot: The Kremlin appears determined to squeeze as many benefits as possible from Mr. Trump’s desire for a Ukraine peace deal, even as it slow-walks the negotiations. Viewed from Moscow, better ties with Washington are an economic and geopolitical boon — one that may be achieved even as Russian missiles continue pounding Ukraine.

· Interviews last week with senior Russian foreign-policy figures at a security conference in New Delhi suggested that the Kremlin saw negotiations over Ukraine and over U.S.-Russia ties as running on two separate tracks. Mr. Putin continues to seek a far-reaching victory in Ukraine but is humoring Mr. Trump’s cease-fire push to seize the benefits of a thaw with Washington.

-U.S. Executive Warns of Arbitrary Ways of Russia's Courts: A foul cell in a Moscow detention center was about the last place an American businessman named Michael Calvey expected to find himself after spending 25 years building a flourishing venture capital firm in Russia that transformed some tech startups into global brands. First, beefy agents from the F.S.B., the federal security service, ransacked his apartment before dawn. Hours later he was confined to a holding cell with two other inmates and a filthy hole in the floor for a toilet. (NYT)

· ''The cell is stuffy and hot, an oppressive stench hanging in the air as if from accumulated decades of human sweat mixed with the indescribable horrors emanating from the toilet hole area,'' Mr. Calvey wrote in a new book out this week called ''Odyssey Moscow.'' It details his extended ordeal through the Russian court system in a fabricated fraud case initiated in 2019: ''In the course of a few surreal, terrifying hours I have morphed from one of the most successful Western businessmen in Russia into a prisoner of the state.''

· With President Trump lauding the possibility of ''major economic development transactions'' between the United States and Russia as he seeks improved relations with Moscow, Mr. Calvey's fate stands as a cautionary tale about the significant personal and professional risks involved in doing business in Russia, particularly given the arbitrary nature of its courts.

-To Him, Americans Were Always Heroes. He’s Not So Sure About Today’s: For eight decades, Henri Mignon has viewed Americans as heroes. They twice liberated his tiny Belgian hometown, Houffalize, from German occupation — the second time, he said, when he was 8 years old, mere hours after shrapnel from shelling had killed his father. The image of U.S. troops handing out gum to local children is a memory he has carried with him ever since. And he has dedicated more than 30 years to retelling the story of the war as a guide to tourists who flock to this corner of the Belgium-Luxembourg border, eager to learn about the last major German offensive on the Western Front. (NYT)

· But this month Mr. Mignon, 88, said he felt uncomfortable as he anticipated his Saturday morning Battle of the Bulge tour in Bastogne, just south of Houffalize. It was not long after the disastrous meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump in the Oval Office, and it came as Mr. Trump was presenting a conciliatory tone toward Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s leader.

· Usually Mr. Mignon portrays Americans as heroes and talks about the strong bonds between this part of the world and the United States. This time, he said, he didn’t know exactly what to think about the relationship. “I feel it is changing,” he admitted in the days leading up to the tour.

· Mr. Mignon has taken issue with American foreign policy before — during the Vietnam War, at times over the Middle East. Yet current events had pushed him and his fellow guides to a new level of distress, he said. Like many Europeans, they had felt their long-held admiration for the United States shudder.

· Some guides, he said, had considered halting tours for American groups altogether. Mr. Mignon never contemplated that, but he did fret over exactly what he would say as he shuttled students and teachers from North Carolina around Bastogne. Would he again emphasize the closeness of the relationship between Europeans and Americans? How would he do that when modern America, from his vantage in Belgium, was looking far less heroic?

-Pope Francis is back home after a 5-week hospital stay for life-threatening double pneumonia: A weak and frail Pope Francis has returned home to the Vatican from the hospital after a five-week, life-threatening bout of pneumonia. The motorcade carrying the 88-year-old pope entered the Perugino gate entrance to Vatican City, and Francis was seen wearing nasal tubes for supplemental oxygen. (AP)

· During the trip home from Gemelli hospital, Francis took a slight detour to the St. Mary Major basilica, where his favorite icon of the Madonna is located and where he always goes to pray after a foreign visit. His return home brought relief after fears that his illness could be fatal or lead to another papal resignation.

-Taiwan President’s Gambit: Time for a Tougher Stance on China: After Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, launched a broad drive this month against what he warned was expanding Chinese subversion and spying, the backlash was swift. Across the Taiwan Strait, Beijing hit back, sending a surge of military planes and ships near the island and warning that he was “playing with fire.” In Taiwan, Mr. Lai’s opponents accused him of dangerously goading China. But Mr. Lai is wagering that he can — and, his supporters say, must — take a harder line against Chinese influence now, notwithstanding the threats from Beijing and the possibility that Taiwan’s opposition parties will dig in deeper against his agenda. (NYT)

· Mr. Lai appears to have concluded that China will limit its actions against Taiwan while Beijing focuses on trying to negotiate with President Trump over the escalating trade war, said David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who monitors Taiwanese affairs. “The best guess is that he assessed that, if he was going to do this, he should do it at a time when China doesn’t want something to complicate its discussions with the United States,” Mr. Sacks, in an interview, said of Mr. Lai’s security steps.

· Taiwan’s political parties have for decades argued over whether to try to work with or distance the island from neighboring China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, to be taken by force if Beijing leaders so decide. The contention has taken on a sharper edge since Mr. Lai declared on March 13 that China was a “foreign hostile force” exploiting Taiwan’s freedoms to “divide, destroy, and subvert us from within.”

· He laid out 17 steps to fight back, including restoring military courts to try Taiwanese military personnel accused of espionage and other security crimes. He wants to more closely monitor Taiwanese people’s contacts with China to stop what he said was Beijing’s political exploitation of religious, educational and cultural exchanges. He demanded greater disclosure about Taiwanese politicians who visit China. Many such politicians belong to the opposition Nationalist Party.

-China Is Ready to Blockade Taiwan. Here's How: China's armed forces are more ready than ever to surround the self-ruled island of Taiwan, cut it off from the world and try to squeeze it into submission. A Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be an act of war that sparks a global crisis. It would provoke a military response by Taiwan, force President Trump to decide whether the U.S. military should help defend the island, disrupt global trade and impel European nations to impose punishing sanctions on Beijing. But the Chinese military, empowered by a decadeslong buildup and ordered by leader Xi Jinping to rapidly modernize by 2027, already has demonstrated what it can do. In increasingly complex exercises, Chinese forces have encircled Taiwan and simulated blockades. (WSJ)

· The more that China prepares, the greater the risk that Beijing decides to shift without notice from drills to war. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn’t rule out the use of force to seize it. A blockade is one of Xi’s most powerful military options—short of an invasion, a steep challenge for the not-yet-battle-tested Chinese military—to induce the island to surrender to Beijing’s authority.

· China’s military exercises provide clues about how Beijing would enforce a blockade. The Pentagon, military experts and monitoring by Taiwan fill out the picture of how it would take shape and the readiness of China’s armed forces to carry it out. China has many options—recent tabletop wargames led by Taiwan’s president investigated around a dozen versions of a blockade or similar action, according to people who took part—but all share common features.

-Japan Aims to Make Military More Potent With New Joint Command: Japan put the branches of its military under a single operational command, taking a step the US, China and other nations have followed to better prepare for conflict by ensuring coordination between their air, land, sea and other forces. A joint headquarters for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces was launched Monday in Tokyo with responsibility for overall military operations, a government spokesman said. “With the establishment of the Joint Operations Command, the SDF will be able to command its units centrally on a day-to-day basis, enabling it to maintain a flexible defense posture in response to developing events,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said. (Bloomberg)

· The new command center reflects progress in Japan’s efforts to make its military a more capable fighting force amid growing challenges from regional rivals such as China and North Korea. As well as sharply increasing defense spending, Japan has created a new division of its military modeled on the US Marine Corps.

-North Korea is testing weapons in Ukraine for potential use against South, envoy warns: North Korea is using its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to test weapons it could deploy against the South in a future conflict, Ukraine’s ambassador to Seoul said in a news report Sunday. Ukraine and South Korea share a common adversary, Ukrainian Ambassador to South Korea Dmytro Ponomarenko said in written remarks published by Yonhap News. (Stars and Stripes)

· South Korea “should not forget that Pyongyang also uses Ukrainian soil as a testing ground for its weaponry, which could be used in future possible standoff,” Ponomarenko said. Seoul “has no reason to hesitate in the development of full-scale military-technical cooperation” with Kyiv, he said. “It’s a matter of interest for both Kyiv and Seoul,” he added.

-South Korean court reinstates impeached PM Han Duck-soo as acting president: South Korea's Constitutional Court reinstated Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to the post of acting president on Monday, striking down his impeachment as he pledged to focus on steering Asia's fourth-biggest economy through a U.S. "trade war". The ruling, which comes amid months of political turmoil in the country, returns Han to power immediately. He took over as acting leader from President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was impeached over his imposition of martial law in December. (Reuters)

· “I believe the people are making it very clear, in one voice, that the extreme confrontation in politics must stop,” said Han, who thanked the court for its “wise decision” and the cabinet for their hard work while he was suspended. “As acting president, I will do my best to maintain stable state administration, and devote all wisdom and capabilities to safeguard national interests in the trade war,” Han said in televised comments.

· South Korea, one of the world’s top exporters, has been bracing for the potential impact of a range of threatened tariffs under U.S. President Donald Trump. South Korea has already seen U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminium and has been seeking an exemption from reciprocal U.S tariffs next month. Earlier this month, Trump singled out South Korea for applying high tariffs on U.S. exports.

-Australia to speed up $1 billion in defence spending in budget, says defence minister: Australia will bring forward A$1 billion in defence spending in Tuesday's federal budget to boost its military capability, including guided weapons manufacture, an AUKUS submarine base and a frigate program, Defence Minister Richard Marles said on Monday. Marles said the federal budget would contain an increase of A$10.6 billion (US$6.66 billion) for defence over the next four years, part of a previously announced A$50 billion boost over a decade, which he said was the most significant increase in defence spending since the end of the Second World War. (Reuters)

· "Part of the A$10.6 billion sees bringing forward an additional billion dollars and that is because of the need to accelerate Australia's capability and development," Marles said at the Avalon Air Show in Victoria. "This will see us have ready HMAS Stirling, the Henderson Defence Precinct for the establishment of the Submarine Rotational Force West. This will see us move forward at a faster pace in establishing the Guided Weapons and Explosives Enterprise," he added.

-Australian army gets battle-tested US long-range missiles: Australia's army has received its first delivery of a "game changer" mobile long-range US rocket system, the government said Monday. The country's acquisition of the HIMARS system -- used with devastating effect by Ukraine against Russian forces -- was accelerated after a 2023 defence strategic review. That review called for a shift toward long-range deterrence, with China's rapid military build-up feeding concerns about the vulnerability of Australia's links to its trade partners and global supply chains. (AFP)

· The first two of a planned 42 HIMARS launcher vehicles had already arrived from the United States, the government said in a statement, describing the system as a "game changer" that would bolster security in Australia and the region. "We are making record investments to ensure the Australian Defence Force has the capability it needs, when it needs it to keep Australians safe," said Defence Minister Richard Marles.

-Re-election pledges to tip Australian budget back into red: Australia is set to deliver a budget deficit this week, snapping two rare years in the black as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese doles out household relief to boost his re-election chances and global risks cloud the economic outlook. Ahead of his fourth budget on Tuesday, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said the budget would be "responsible", with targeted cost of living measures front and centre in the budget. "It's a budget which is all about the cost of living, but also making sure our economy is more resilient in the face of all this global economic uncertainty," Chalmers said in a TV interview on Sunday. (Reuters)

-Sri Lanka to host India PM Modi next month: Sri Lanka will host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week, an official said Monday, as Colombo grapples with the competing interests of its powerful northern neighbour and China, its largest lender. A member of leftist President Anura Kumara Dissanayake's office said Modi will be the first foreign head of government to visit the island nation under the new administration. (AP)

-Canadian PM Carney calls snap election, says Trump wants to break Canada: New Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday called a snap election for April 28, saying he needed a strong mandate to deal with the threat posed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who "wants to break us so America can own us." The comments showed the extent to which relations between the U.S. and Canada, two long-time allies and major trading partners, have deteriorated since Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and threatened to annex it as the 51st state. (Reuters)

-Trump's global funding cuts leave a void in Africa for rivals to exploit: President Donald Trump's withdrawal of tens of billions of dollars in U.S. global aid spending has rapidly diminished key elements of America's presence in Africa — upending long-standing programs, severing sensitive relationships and leaving a void that rival powers are keen to exploit. Washington's vanishing largesse and declining influence could further imperil stability in the region as governments turn increasingly to China and Russia, according to some analysts and former U.S. officials. America's two most powerful adversaries have been strengthening military and economic ties across Africa in recent years and investing heavily in media initiatives to counter Western narratives. (WP)

-Six police personnel killed in Kenya by suspected al Shabaab fighters: At least six police personnel were killed in Kenya while four were injured in an attack on a police camp by suspected Islamist militants in Garissa county in the country's east on the border with Somalia, police said. The assault which occurred early Sunday was carried out by suspected fighters from Somalia's al Qaeda-allied al Shabaab group, said a police report sent out to the media. Al Shabaab frequently carries out cross-border attacks in the area against both military and civilian targets. (Reuters)

-M23 remain in eastern DR Congo town despite announcing withdrawal: The M23 armed group on Sunday was keeping hold of the town of Walikale which it recently captured in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, despite announcing it planned to withdraw to further peace talks. The Rwanda-backed outfit announced on Saturday that it was "repositioning its forces" outside the outskirts of Walikale to help create the right conditions for "peace and political dialogue". (AFP)

-Ugandan army chief says coming for Congo city of Kisangani: Uganda's army chief claimed on Sunday that his troops or the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group would enter the key Congolese city of Kisangani in the coming days. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is also son of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, said either the Ugandan army or M23 would be in the city in "one week". The Rwanda-backed M23, a Congolese armed group, has seized control of large swathes of eastern Congo in recent months. But it has not indicated plans to advance on Kisangani, a strategic city in the centre of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (AFP)

-Four political activists abducted in Burkina Faso: NGO: Four political activists in Burkina Faso, belonging to a political movement denouncing civilian massacres blamed on the army and allied militias, have been kidnapped, their group said on Sunday. Their abduction follows that of another member of the same Servir et Non Se Servir (SENS) movement on Tuesday, and added to numerous other kidnappings of people viewed as critical of the country's military rulers. (AFP)

-UN raises alarm over wave of 'arbitrary' arrests in Libya: The United Nations Support Mission in Libya expressed concern over what it said were arbitrary arrests, including of lawyers and members of the judiciary, calling for their immediate release. "UNSMIL is alarmed by the wave of arbitrary arrest and detentions across Libya by law enforcement and security actors," it said in a statement late Saturday. "These actors are using their powers of arrest and detention to target individuals for their alleged political affiliations, to silence perceived dissent and to undermine judicial independence." (AFP)

BORDER

-Trump officials defend use of wartime law to deport migrants: Trump administration officials on Sunday defended their use of extraordinary war powers to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants despite a judge blocking the move and Venezuela denying U.S. officials' assertions that the deportees were gang members. "It's modern-day warfare, and we are going to continue to fight that and protect American citizens every single step of the way," Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on the "Sunday Morning Futures" program. (Reuters)

-Trump administration to end legal status of 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela: The Trump administration is ending legal status for more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, according to a notice posted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS said it would be rescinding “categorical parole programs for inadmissible aliens” from the listed countries and their immediate family members. It’s the latest move from the administration cracking down on immigration and rescinding Biden-era policies. (The Hill)

· “Over the previous two years, DHS has implemented programs through which inadmissible aliens who are citizens or nationals of designated countries, and their immediate family members, could request authorization to travel to the United States in order to be considered for parole into the country,” the notice said.

-Trump's US migrant hunt spares no one from deportation: Franco Caraballo was arrested while at a US immigration center for an appointment. Shirly Guardado was detained while at work. Camila Munoz was taken into custody on her way home from her honeymoon. US President Donald Trump's hunt for migrants to expel from the country is sparing no one. And while the government claims only criminals are being targeted, many of those in the crosshairs tell a different story. (AFP)

· At a checkpoint in Texas, immigration agents stopped an undocumented Mexican couple on their way to a Houston hospital for their 10-year-old daughter's cancer treatment. The family was deported, separating the parents from their children, five of whom are US citizens, rights group Texas Civil Rights Project said.

· According to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), the Trump administration detained 32,809 migrants in its first 50 days in office, almost half of whom were convicted criminals. Last weekend it deported more than 200 to a prison in El Salvador, invoking the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act and accusing most of the deportees of belonging to the Venezuela-based Tren de Aragua gang. Not all who were deported appear to be gang members, however.

-Trump is targeting illegal immigration at the U.S.-Canada border. Here's how some migrants cross there: An upstate New York sheriff, whose county sits along the U.S.-Canada border, credits President Trump's immigration policies for a recent lull in illegal immigration, but warned that he doesn't believe the quiet will last. (CBS News)

· Sheriff David Favro oversees Clinton County, New York, which includes about 28 miles of the northern border region the U.S. Customs and Border Protection calls the Swanton Sector. Last year, there were more illegal crossings in the Swanton Sector than in the previous 17 years combined, with more than 19,000 migrants arrested. Favro, a Democrat and six-time elected sheriff, said there’s been a recent lull.

· “Today, our state of mind is, ‘When is something gonna happen?’ That’s the big concern. And that’s always in the back of, I think, every law enforcement member’s mind,” Favro said. “When is something going to occur? When the numbers are down it gets eerily quiet and we kind of worry about quiet."

-Trump targets lawyers in immigration cases, lawsuits against administration: Legal advocacy groups sounded alarms on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened new actions against lawyers and law firms that bring immigration lawsuits and other cases against the government that he deems unethical. In a memorandum to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi late on Friday, Trump said lawyers were helping to fuel "rampant fraud and meritless claims" in the immigration system, and directed the Justice Department to seek sanctions against attorneys for professional misconduct. (Reuters)

-Homeland’s Envoy to Congress Focuses on Reconciliation, Nominees: The Department of Homeland Security’s top emissary to Congress has a stack of new presidential nominees to get confirmed, dozens of committees to answer to, and a multibillion-dollar GOP budget bill to push forward. Bradley Hayes is taking the sweeping portfolio in stride and hoping his decade of experience on Capitol Hill will help him lock in DHS’s priorities as assistant secretary for the department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. (Bloomberg)

· The stakes are high as Republicans seek to include billions of dollars in border funding to support President Donald Trump‘s mass deportation agenda, using a budget reconciliation bill that faces precarious negotiations and restrictive Senate rules.

-DHS Offices Shuttered: Meanwhile, DHS is dismantling the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which helps members of the public resolve problems with immigration benefits, according to the department. (Bloomberg)

· “These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission,” agency spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a text message confirming reductions in force in both offices. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”

· McLaughlin also explained the move to cut staff in the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which looks specifically at detention conditions, because it “has misused taxpayer funds by facilitating complaints that encourage illegal immigration.”

-Venezuela to resume repatriation of migrants after deal with US, official says: A Venezuelan official says Venezuela will once again accept repatriation flights from the United States carrying its deported nationals, after reaching an agreement. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suspended flights on March 8, after the U.S. Treasury Department announced the withdrawal of Chevron’s license to export Venezuelan oil. In a statement, Jorge Rodríguez referred to the deportation by Donald Trump’s government of some 250 Venezuelans to a high-security prison in El Salvador. “Migrating is not a crime and we will not rest until we achieve the return of all those who require it and until we rescue our brothers kidnapped in El Salvador,” Rodríguez said. (AP)

GUNS

-3 killed and 15 hurt in a shooting at a park in New Mexico’s Las Cruces: Police in New Mexico say three people have been fatally shot and 15 others were injured during an altercation at a park in the desert city of Las Cruces. Police are asking for witnesses to share videos and other tips as they work to identify suspects in the Friday night shooting. It took place around 10 p.m. during an unsanctioned car show at the city’s Young Park. The ages of those shot range from 16 to 36. Las Cruces sits on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico. It is about 40 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. (AP)

-Fatal shooting in New Mexico park casts pall over Legislature and its ability to contain crime: Efforts by New Mexico lawmakers to contain violent crime took center stage Saturday at the conclusion of an annual legislative session — just hours after three people were killed and 15 injured in an outburst of gunfire at a public park in Las Cruces. The events transformed an ordinarily celebratory day for legislators at the close of a 60-day session into a somber affair. “This tragedy reminds us that it’s going to take all of us to continue to come together to address these senseless acts of violence,” said Democratic House Speaker Javier Martinez of Albuquerque. (AP)

· Republicans legislators in the legislative minority said the state is in crisis and urged Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to exercise her authority to bring the legislators back to the Capitol to seek solutions to violent crime. Lujan Grisham said she was considering it, amid feelings of anger and disappointment. “I cannot ignore that we failed to adequately address the public safety crisis in our state,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

· At the same time, legislators have delivered an array of crime-related bills to the governor that aim to enhance criminal penalties, expand the state’s authority to prosecute organized crime and provide new precautions when criminal defendants are deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial.

-Blue state GOP rep forced to remove 2A sticker from laptop: 'Offensive': A Republican lawmaker from Colorado expressed shock at being told by Democratic colleagues that he had to remove a sticker supporting the Second Amendment from his laptop while in the state's House chamber. "I had to cover up this, they couldn't stand my sticker," Colorado Republican state Rep. Ken DeGraaf said during remarks on the state's House floor, pointing to paper covering up a sticker in support of the Second Amendment on a laptop he carried with him to the chamber. "It said ‘shall not be infringed’ and signed ‘2-A’ and that was considered offensive, which I understand would be offensive to this bill," he continued. (Fox News)

· The remarks come as Colorado lawmakers debate a controversial gun control bill that would limit the sale of some semiautomatic firearms that rely on detachable magazines, such as the popular AR-15 platform. The legislation, Colorado Senate Bill 25-003, would be one of the strictest gun control measures in the country, something the state's Democratic lawmakers argue is necessary to keep citizens safe.

AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

-Trump Plans His Tariff ‘Liberation Day’ With More Targeted Push: President Donald Trump’s coming wave of tariffs is poised to be more targeted than the barrage he has occasionally threatened, aides and allies say, a potential relief for markets gripped by anxiety about an all-out tariff war. (Bloomberg)

· Trump is preparing a “Liberation Day” tariff announcement on April 2, unveiling so-called reciprocal tariffs he sees as retribution for tariffs and other barriers from other countries, including longtime US allies. While the announcement would remain a very significant expansion of US tariffs, it’s shaping up as more focused than the sprawling, fully global effort Trump has otherwise mused about, officials familiar with the matter say.

· Trump will announce widespread reciprocal tariffs on nations or blocs but is set to exclude some, and — as of now — the administration is not planning separate, sectoral-specific tariffs to be unveiled at the same event, as Trump had once teased, officials said.

-Plan for U.S. shipbuilding revival risks disruptions: President Donald Trump appears set to broaden his attack on global economic integration by imposing new multimillion-dollar fees on the Chinese container ships that bring many foreign goods to U.S. shores. The proposed fees are intended to counter what the administration describes - echoing its predecessor - as unfair Chinese trade practices that have given Beijing a chokehold on the construction of commercial vessels. (WP)

· Part of a broader White House strategy to revive U.S. shipbuilding, the levies threaten the system of oceangoing trade that has developed over the past quarter-century - and could result in a repeat of the supply chain disruptions the nation suffered during the pandemic. By charging Chinese-owned or -built vessels each time they dock at a U.S. port, the administration hopes to discourage ocean carriers from buying more ships from China.

· The U.S. government would spend some of the tens of billions of dollars raised through the fees on subsidizing a commercial shipbuilding industry that has fallen into disrepair. Generous government support, including tax incentives, would enable revitalized U.S. shipyards to fill orders that now go to facilities in China, South Korea or Japan, according to the administration.

· U.S. exporters also would be required to meet targets for shipping their goods on U.S.-flagged vessels, rising from almost nothing to 15 percent of the total in seven years. But maritime specialists call hopes for a Lazarus-like revival of U.S. shipbuilding unrealistic, saying it would require decades of consistent federal support. Imposing hefty fees on Chinese ships now, before American-made alternatives exist, would only raise freight costs and snarl global supply chains, they said.

-An Obscure Trade Provision May Be Driving U.S. Factory Closures: In his forty-plus years in the textile industry, Larry Severini has seen hundreds of factories close, as companies moved women’s wear and home furnishings and then other textile manufacturing overseas. But Severeni was able to maintain two factories that make the blue backgrounds and white stars for American flags—until January 31, 2025. On that day, he closed his factory in Gaffney, S.C., for good, getting rid of millions of dollars of machinery and laying off dozens of workers, some of whom had been laboring there for decades. “People are buying flags from China at an artificially low price that we can’t compete with,” says Severini, who still has one factory open, in Kingstree, S.C., which makes star fields for the flag and other textiles. (Time Magazine)

· It may sound strange to hear of a manufacturing company closing right now. In the second Trump Administration, the President has promised—and levied—tariffs on countries including China, Canada, and Mexico in an effort to boost American manufacturing. Trump also levied tariffs on Chinese goods in his first term that the Biden Administration maintained. “This administration is leaving 40 years of failed industrial policy behind and bringing American manufacturing BACK!” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X recently.

· But despite the bravado, many of those working in the textile industry say conditions are tougher than ever, with 27 textile factories shuttering in the last 20 months, according to Kim Glas, president and CEO of the National Council of Textile Organizations, a lobbying group.

· They blame a once-obscure trade provision, called de minimis, which has been thrust into the spotlight in recent months. President Trump ended de minimis in a February executive order before reversing himself days later as chaos ensued. The White House said de minimis would resume when “adequate systems are in place” to deal with the shipments.

· Created by Congress in 1938, de minimis allows people to import packages worth less than $800 without paying tariffs on those packages or going through formal customs paperwork. It was created as a nod to consumer fairness: travelers were able to bring back a certain amount of goods from overseas without paying customs on those goods, supporters reasoned, so people who couldn’t travel should have the same privilege. In 2016, Congress raised the threshold from $200 to $800.

· Retailers like Severini say that the de minimis provision allows Chinese factories to send cheap goods, such as American flags, to the U.S. without the same tariffs that they would have to pay to send the same product to China. Severini says he suspects that sellers on e-commerce websites like Amazon order large quantities of American flags, avoid paying tariffs on them through de minimis, and then sell them online, sometimes labeling them as made in the U.S.A.

-UAE Pledges $1.4 Trillion US Investment After Trump Meeting: The United Arab Emirates will invest $1.4 trillion in the United States over 10 years following a meeting earlier this week between President Donald Trump and Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s national security adviser, according to the White House. “This new framework will substantially increase the UAE’s existing investments in the U.S. economy in AI infrastructure, semiconductors, energy, and American manufacturing,” the White House said in a statement Friday announcing the deal. (Bloomberg)

ECONOMY

-Dollar coasts as traders await Trump tariff clarity: The dollar drifted just below a three-week high versus major peers on Monday as traders cautiously awaited clarity on U.S. President Donald Trump's next round of tariffs. The euro rose slightly following three straight sessions of declines, while the yen edged lower against the greenback, pressured by a rise in U.S. Treasury yields. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the currency against a basket of six counterparts, was flat at 104.15 as of 0525 GMT, after touching 104.22 on Friday for the first time since March 7. Last week, the index rose 0.4%, its first week of gains this month. (Reuters)

· The dollar has been under pressure for most of this year as the market's assumptions that Trump would quickly usher in pro-growth policies transformed into worries that the president's aggressive and erratic trade policies could trigger a recession. The next round of tariffs is due on April 2, when the White House will announce reciprocal levies on many countries.

-Longtime Fans of U.S. Stocks Are Parking Money Elsewhere: Keith Moffat was born in Canada, lives in the Netherlands and has an Irish passport. But until recently, his stock portfolio was (almost) all-American. At one point, around 90% of Moffat's investments were in U.S. stocks. He sold all of his American holdings in the past few weeks and piled into exchange-traded funds that hold shares of European and other international companies, alongside European defense stocks. Moffat said the U.S. market is overpriced. But President Trump's rhetoric referring to Canada as the 51st state also has stung. "It was the dagger in the heart," he said. "There are a lot of Europeans with money who are upset over what's happening in the U.S. Why would we put our money there?" (WSJ)

· Just two months after JPMorgan Chase declared American exceptionalism "the broad and dominant" investing theme of 2025, ordinary investors across the world are looking elsewhere. Instead of riding the wave of U.S. outperformance, they are parsing the potential implications of tariff wars and major shifts in U.S. foreign policy. And for much of this volatile stretch, markets in China and Europe outpaced expectations.

-Wealth Effect Bolstering US Economy Is Now Its Achilles’ Heel: The stock market volatility set off by concerns over President Donald Trump’s rapidly shifting trade war threatens one of the primary growth engines of the US economy: spending by high-income earners. The well-to-do bolstered the economy over the past few years, keeping their wallets open even as the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to stifle inflation, pandemic savings dwindled and lower-income consumers buckled under the strain of higher prices. Much of the spending by rich Americans has been fueled by what’s known as the “wealth effect,” a theory from behavioral economics that says robust stock market gains and rising home prices cause consumers to feel flush even if their incomes haven’t changed. (Bloomberg)

· A market rout that began last month has shaved trillions of dollars off US stock values, spreading uneasiness that has some Americans reassessing their spending. Economists say a significant pullback from high earners would jeopardize an expansion that’s looking increasingly fragile. At their most recent policy meeting, last week, Federal Reserve officials pared back their growth forecasts for this year, amid increased uncertainty over the effects of the Trump administration’s policies. The median projection showed policymakers now expect the US economy will expand 1.7% in 2025 rather than the 2.1% they predicted in December.

-SEC to Lose About 500 Staffers to Buyout, Resignation Offers: The SEC will lose roughly 10% of its staff, or about 500 employees, in response to the agency’s $50,000 buyout and deferred-resignation offers, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Some of the more significant departures will come from the SEC’s enforcement, exams and general counsel divisions, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information. The number may climb even higher as additional people accepted the buyout ahead of the March 21 deadline for the $50,000 incentive. Some of the departures may not take place until later this year. (Bloomberg)

· More cost cuts are on the agency’s agenda. The SEC plans to eliminate the leases for its Los Angeles and Philadelphia offices. The General Services Administration has also explored ending the Chicago office’s lease, though that could come with a significant financial penalty, Bloomberg has reported. Read More

-SBA to cut 43% of workforce, return to pre-pandemic staffing levels: The Small Business Administration plans to cut 43%, a decision the agency head says is needed to cut down on “mission creep” and employees no longer needed to support pandemic-era stimulus programs. SBA announced the cuts Friday, saying it will eliminate nonessential roles and return staffing to pre-pandemic levels. The agency expects to cut about 2,700 positions from its current workforce of nearly 6,500 employees. “SBA will refocus its resources on the core missions of supplying capital, fostering innovation, supporting veteran small business owners, providing field support, and delivering timely disaster relief,” the agency wrote in a press release. (Federal News Network)

-FHFA Eyes Firing Fair Lending Staff: The Federal Housing Finance Agency is looking to fire employees focused on fair lending and consumer protection as part of a wave of terminations across the agency, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The regulator started putting scores of employees on administrative leave, as a precursor to their termination, the sources told Bloomberg Law. The shakeup, part of the Trump administration’s bid to slash what the president says is federal government bloat, imperils important research on the US mortgage market, industry professionals say. (Bloomberg)

-Trump's New Chief Embarks on Shake-Up at Mortgage Giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: In his first full week as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, home-builder heir and former private-equity executive William Pulte ousted more than a dozen board members at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Pulte made himself the chairman of the boards and installed a set of new directors (one of them was Christopher Stanley, an Elon Musk ally who resigned from the post a day later). He removed senior executives at the companies and the FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie. Among those let go was Freddie CEO Diana Reid. (WSJ)

· “There are some really great people inside of these businesses, and the good news for them is there is a lot of upward mobility, to earn and grow MORE!” Pulte said on X on March 16, a day before the board changes. The FHFA declined to comment further.

GOVERNMENT NEWS OF NOTE

-House Agenda for the Week of March 24: The House acts this week on legislation to boost disclosures about universities’ ties to foreign entities and undo a pair of regulations on commercial refrigerators and freezers — continuing the drumbeat of GOP-led rollbacks of Biden-era rules. The Rules Committee will meet today to set the terms of floor debate on those measures, which would need a simple majority for passage. (Bloomberg)

· Eight bills from the House Science Committee are set for action today under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. The list includes measures that would widen policy to target indirect payments to US researchers from foreign adversaries and codify a deadline for the Commerce Department to act on applications for private remote sensing space systems operations.

· The House is scheduled to meet today through Thursday, according to the weekly schedule from Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), although votes were canceled Wednesday to allow members to attend the funeral for the late Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

-GOP Looks to Reconciliation, Taxes After Funding Fight: Republicans are looking at next steps to overcome an impasse so they can formally unlock the reconciliation process and enact President Donald Trump’s agenda. With government funding in the rear view mirror, reconciliation is taking the forefront for Republicans as they deliberate how to pack Trump’s campaign promises — including the permanent extension of his 2017 tax cuts — into a reconciliation package. (Bloomberg)

· But House and Senate Republicans remain at a stalemate over what the budget resolution, which sets the parameters of the bill, should look like. GOP senators are pushing to score a reconciliation bill under a “current policy” baseline, a different accounting method that would consider the extension of Trump’s tax cuts as free.

· House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said he’s open to using the current policy baseline, but only if they’re tied to significant spending cuts. “If it keeps our framework of deficit neutrality, then I’m open to it,” he said, earlier this month.

· Both chambers adopted dueling budget resolutions in February with the House’s framework setting the stage for one massive bill encompassing Trump’s agenda. The Senate’s budget clears the way for a targeted bill focusing on the southern border and defense first, kicking a more complicated tax debate to later in the year.

-The House’s one-bill strategy has become the prevailing option for Republicans as Trump has repeatedly expressed his preference for “one big beautiful bill,” but the Senate’s two-track approach has become a fall-back plan in case Trump changes his mind. Proponents of the Senate’s budget resolution have argued Republicans need to deliver major legislative victories for Trump early in his term. (Bloomberg)

· Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has set an ambitious timeline for Congress to pass most of Trump’s agenda ideally by Memorial Day, but Republicans could easily slip past that self-imposed deadline given they have yet to agree to the same budget resolution.

-More Tax Meetings: Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are expected to hold additional marathon meetings over the next two weeks to discuss how to implement Trump’s tax priorities, according to a member on the panel and a person familiar with the planning. GOP tax writers held two similar meetings earlier this month lasting several hours that featured an appearance from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. (Bloomberg)

· Lawmakers are attempting to figure out how to extend Trump’s tax cuts and enact his other priorities such as no tax on tips and overtime with limited wiggle room. House Republicans’ budget resolution allows the panel to enact up to $4.5 trillion in tax cuts contingent on them finding an accompanying $2 trillion in spending cuts.

-X-Date: Congress faces a deadline likely between mid-July to early October to raise or suspend the debt limit, the Bipartisan Policy Center projected Monday. The group published the “X-Date” projection in a Monday morning report warning that “no one — not even the Treasury secretary — can know precisely when the X Date will arrive.” (Bloomberg)

· House Republicans’ budget resolution includes a $4 trillion hike to the debt limit, which would likely stave off a default until the end of the calendar year 2026, the report said. Though Senate Republicans have discussed breaking off the debt limit measure from reconciliation, acknowledging the difficulties of passing a debt limit hike with solely Republican votes. Read More

-Children’s Online Safety Effort Gets a Hearing This Week: Lawmakers return to Washington and legislative efforts on kids’ online safety is on this week’s agenda. The dangers posed to children on the internet will be the subject of a hearing from the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade on Wednesday. Hearing Notice. (Bloomberg)

· “Our increasingly digital world continually presents new threats and challenges, especially to our children. Congress must continue to address risks facing the most vulnerable and take steps to help ensure they are not being exploited by bad actors online,” E&C Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) said. “We are looking forward to this important discussion and hope this leads to bipartisan consensus around legislation to protect Americans, including our children, from threats in the online world.”

· The hearing marks a reboot in negotiations in the House after legislative efforts stalled out last Congress. Senators introduced legislation last month that would ban kids under 13 from social media and introduced a children’s online privacy bill earlier this month.

-GOP senators warn Trump agenda will be slowed by internal divisions: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has cautioned GOP colleagues that the Senate isn’t likely to pass President Trump’s border security, energy and tax agenda until July, at the earliest, and some Republican senators are warning the bill could drag well into the fall. Much of Washington’s attention has focused on the rocky path Trump’s agenda faces in the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) slim majority means he can only lose one GOP vote and still pass GOP legislation. (The Hill)

· But Republican senators are warning that getting a major package through the Senate will take months longer than has been publicly discussed, due to the sheer size of Trump’s ambitious agenda and internal Republican divisions over an array of policy questions. While Thune has told Republican senators he wants to move a budget resolution in the “next work period” before the April recess to show progress on Trump’s agenda, the “finished product” is still months away.

· “Thune and others have said they don’t think it’s realistic we’ll move the finished product until the end of July,” a Republican senator said of Thune’s projected timeline for moving Trump’s agenda. “Thune said he thought that the House’s timeline on this was totally unrealistic and that the House doesn’t have their ducks in a row, and their budget resolution has to be completely reworked, and this idea that we do it by April or May is just ridiculous,” the source said.

-Chuck Schumer holds firm, rejecting calls to quit as top Senate Democrat: U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday dismissed calls from some Democratic lawmakers for him to step down as leader in the Senate over his approach to a recently passed government funding bill. Schumer sparked anger among Democrats last week when he decided not to block a Republican-drafted spending bill that many in the party said gave President Donald Trump, a Republican, too much power. (Reuters)

-AOC tries to broaden her appeal within a Democratic base spoiling for a fight: Bernie Sanders stepped onto a stage in downtown Denver, surrounded by tens of thousands of cheering supporters in what he described as the biggest rally he had ever addressed. The Vermont senator put his hand on the shoulder of the woman who had introduced him, a signal for her to stay on stage. “She has become an inspiration to millions of young people,” Sanders said of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, recounting her biography from a girl who helped her mother clean houses and later became a bartender before emerging as political insurgent who ousted a powerful New York Democrat in a U.S. House primary. (AP)

-Pro-Trump senator meets China’s economy tsar amid trade tensions: U.S. Senator Steve Daines, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump, met with China’s economy tsar, Vice Premier He Lifeng, on Saturday, marking the first visit by a U.S. politician to Beijing since Trump returned to the White House. Striking a cordial tone at the start of their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the Chinese vice premier joked that the Montana Republican looked younger and more handsome than on television, according to a pool report. (Reuters)

-Trump memo grants government-wide firing power to OPM: President Trump on Thursday issued a presidential memorandum aiming to expand the power of the Office of Personnel Management to fire federal employees, alarming experts and federal employee groups. The memo, quietly published Thursday night alongside an executive order mandating agencies share data, particularly with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, delegates to OPM the authority to fire federal employees based on “post-appointment conduct.” (Government Executive)

· A federal employee’s appointment occurs at the conclusion of their one-year probationary period, when their full civil service protections kick in. Prior to that point, the Office of Personnel Management has authority to determine whether a federal job applicant or new hire is “suitable” for federal employment, which generally refers to questions of their “character or conduct.”

· But once an employee’s probationary period has ended, the authority to discipline or remove an employee rests solely with agency that employs them. Indeed, even if an employee threatens national security, only his or her employing agency may take action to suspend or remove them.

· Trump’s memo expands who may remove employees for “conduct and character” reasons to include OPM, and tasks the HR agency with writing the regulations governing the agency’s ostensibly new power. Agencies may make referrals to OPM for approval, or the OPM director may reach down and order individual agencies to discipline or fire workers.

-Concerns about espionage rise as Trump and Musk fire thousands of federal workers: As President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job. For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk's Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say. (AP)

· Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.

· “This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.

-Feds are split on return to offices: Federal workers are sharply divided over President Donald Trump's return-to-office mandate, and more than a quarter of those who say they were previously able to do their jobs from home are actively looking for another job, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll. Across the federal workforce, 49 percent of employees support and 50 percent oppose a five-day in-office requirement. But among federal employees who say their duties can be performed from home, 85 percent are in opposition, according to the poll. Meanwhile, 70 percent of workers who say they can't work remotely back the mandate. (WP)

· The poll’s findings come amid a chaotic and rushed return-to-office push, in conjunction with the broad confusion over whether thousands of federal workers will be able to keep their jobs after several lawsuits have challenged the administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the workforce.

· Some federal workers have reported that there is not nearly enough desk space for all of them, after many offices were downsized in recent years, and that they are forced to work in conference rooms or closets or kill time in hallways while they wait for desks to open up. The Federal Emergency Management Agency instructed supervisors to resolve some conflicts over workspaces via coin flip.

· Some workers returned to the office only to learn that the Trump administration had canceled their building’s lease, while some remote employees were given just days' notice to report to offices hundreds of miles away.

-GSA to ‘quadruple' in size to centralize procurement across the government: Anew executive order moves some agencies’ contracting work to the General Services Administration, which already plays a key role in government procurement, agency leadership told employees in an all-hands meeting. Trump reportedly signed the contracting-focused executive order on Thursday. The text of the order wasn’t immediately available, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to request for comment. (Nextgov/FCW)

· “Over the coming months, we are going to ingest all domestic, commercial goods and services inside the GSA. We’re not going to do all $900 billion, but we will do about $400 billion, so we’re going to quadruple our size,” Josh Gruenbaum, the head of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, told employees Thursday, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by Nextgov/FCW.

-Trump order put states at the forefront of cyber and natural disaster response: President Donald Trump earlier this week signed an executive order that puts the onus on state and local governments to prepare for natural disasters and cyberattacks, as part of his wider push to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency. (Government Executive)

· The order calls on states and localities to make “common sense approaches and investments” in infrastructure and planning to help prepare for cyberattacks, wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters that they deal with. The order does not specify what those commonsense approaches are or how to fund them.

· “Federal policy must rightly recognize that preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the state, local, and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible, and efficient federal government,” the order says. “Citizens are the immediate beneficiaries of sound local decisions and investments designed to address risks, including cyberattacks, wildfires, hurricanes, and space weather.”

-FEMA Disaster Workers Need Secretary’s OK to Stay on Job: Most FEMA employees will need Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s approval to stay on the job after their current terms expire, paving the way for significant staffing reductions. (Bloomberg)

· “FEMA has implemented a full hiring freeze and instituted a DHS review process for all disaster-field positions that are up for renewal,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. The policy change affects reservists, temporary full-time employees, local hires, and on-call response employees, who make up the bulk of FEMA’s workforce, but excludes certain positions like fee-funded positions and human resources specialists.

· House Hearing: FEMA will be the subject of Tuesday’s House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing, as members are scheduled to discuss ways to overhaul the agency and federal disaster assistance, as well as President Donald Trump’s establishment of a FEMA Review Council. Hearing Website

-Trump Health Civil Rights Office Quickly Dismantles Biden Policy: An HHS office that influences health-care coverage is undergoing major changes in line with President Donald Trump’s agenda on gender, abortion, and religion and his push to reverse his predecessor’s policies. Under the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights acted to expand health-care protections to transgender individuals, used privacy law to shield abortion records from law enforcement, set discrimination standards for federal grants, updated disability protections, and more. (Bloomberg)

· But the OCR under Trump is moving to undo much of that work. For instance, it has recently withdrawn gender-affirming care guidance and threatened enforcement against Maine for violating federal law by letting transgender students compete in women’s sports. The office is set to prioritize enforcing religious protections.

· These policy reversals undermine the office’s mission of expanding health-care access and will exacerbate disparities in who receives needed care, critics say. Adding to their concerns are recent shifts in US Supreme Court case law, particularly involving religious exemptions, said Jennifer Pizer, chief legal officer at Lambda Legal. But supporters are embracing the policy reversals as long overdue. “OCR is moving fast and fixing things,” said Roger Severino, who led the office during Trump’s first term.

-Slow Pace of Mining, Federal Layoffs to Stymie Trump’s Order: Federal agencies will need a full staff to implement President Donald Trump’s order to expedite mining on federal lands, but massive layoffs could hinder the process, and it could take years for agencies and companies to mobilize and begin digging rock. Trump’s executive order requires agencies to identify all federal lands with known mineral deposits and declare mining as the primary use of those lands by this week. It’s essential for the Trump administration to conduct a widespread minerals mapping project before moving ahead, said Hilary Tompkins, a partner at Hogan Lovells who served as Interior solicitor during the Obama administration. (Bloomberg)

· Critics argue the order could lead to environmental harm, and may conflict with federal laws requiring public lands to be managed for multiple uses. Furthermore, the order says nothing about making mining companies pay royalties for extracting commodities from publicly-owned land. There’s a worry that companies operating mines producing non-critical minerals, such as gold, could be given the right to easily expand their operations on federal land at little or no cost, said John Leshy, a University of California College of the Law professor who served as Interior solicitor in the Clinton administration.

-Trump’s regulatory freeze throws US fishing industry into chaos: President Donald Trump’s regulatory freeze has injected chaos and uncertainty into a number of lucrative American fisheries, raising the risk of a delayed start to the fishing season for some East Coast cod and haddock fleets and leading to overfishing of Atlantic bluefin tuna, according to Reuters interviews with industry groups and federal government employees. (Reuters)

· America’s $320 billion fishing industry relies on a branch of the federal government, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to manage coastal fisheries. Under a 1976 law, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service develops management plans for 45 fisheries, setting quotas and determining the start and close of fishing seasons, in consultation with federal government scientists and local fishermen.

-Trump's Social Security chief backs down from 'shutting down' agency: The head of the U.S. Social Security Administration has backed down from "shutting down the agency" after a federal judge rebuked him for misinterpreting a court ruling that limited billionaire Elon Musk's access to agency information. The agency's leader, Leland Dudek, who has been cooperating with a Musk-led group tasked with reducing government waste, said in a statement on Friday that the court had clarified its ruling. (Reuters)

-US education secretary praises Columbia's reforms to unlock $400 million: U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said on Sunday that changes Columbia University made under pressure from the Trump administration were good first steps toward it restoring federal funding that was pulled over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus. "We are on the right track now to make sure the final negotiations to unfreeze that money will be in place," McMahon said on CNN's "State of the Union." (Reuters)

-Musk Is Positioned to Profit Off Billions in New Government Contracts: Within the Trump administration’s Defense Department, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocketry is being trumpeted as the nifty new way the Pentagon could move military cargo rapidly around the globe. In the Commerce Department, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service will now be fully eligible for the federal government’s $42 billion rural broadband push, after being largely shut out during the Biden era. (NYT)

· At NASA, after repeated nudges by Mr. Musk, the agency is being squeezed to turn its focus to Mars, allowing SpaceX to pursue federal contracts to deliver the first humans to the distant planet. And at the Federal Aviation Administration and the White House itself, Starlink satellite dishes have recently been installed, to expand federal government internet access.

· Mr. Musk, as the architect of a group he called the Department of Government Efficiency, has taken a chain saw to the apparatus of governing, spurring chaos and dread by pushing out some 100,000 federal workers and shutting down various agencies, though the government has not been consistent in explaining the expanse of his power.

· But in selected spots across the government, SpaceX is positioning itself to see billions of dollars in new federal contracts or other support, a dozen current and former federal officials said in interviews with The New York Times.

· The boost in federal spending for SpaceX will come in part as a result of actions by President Trump and Mr. Musk’s allies and employees who now hold government positions. The company will also benefit from policies under the current Trump administration that prioritize hiring commercial space vendors for everything from communications systems to satellite fabrication, areas in which SpaceX now dominates.

-Trump says Kansas City Chiefs to visit White House: U.S. President Donald Trump said he will host the Kansas City Chiefs American football team at the White House following a visit by the NFL Super Bowl champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. Trump told "Outkick the Show" podcast host Clay Travis on Saturday night that he was looking forward to hosting the Chiefs following an April 28 White House ceremony for the Eagles, who trounced the Chiefs 40-22 in New Orleans last month. (Reuters)

-Trump makes NCAA men's wrestling championships his latest sports-focused trip: President Donald Trump attended the NCAA wrestling championships for the second time in three years. Saturday night's trip was the latest example of how he has mostly limited travel early in his new term to trips built around sports events. Trump arrived at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia to a standing ovation and chants of USA! USA! In the two-plus months since returning to the White House, Trump has attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500 in Florida. While president-elect, he went to a UFC fight in New York. (AP)

-Trump asks if Lee Harvey Oswald was helped in assassinating JFK: U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday he believes the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was carried out by Lee Harvey Oswald but asked if the gunman had help. When asked if he believes Oswald killed JFK, Trump responded, "I do. And I've always held that, of course he was, was he helped?" Trump told Clay Travis, the founder of sports website Outkick, during an interview on Air Force One. (Reuters)

-Trump pulls security clearances for Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton: U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday took away security clearances for former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others in his latest move against his Democratic opponents. The Republican president, who has also revoked the security clearance for former President Joe Biden, defeated Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and Harris in last year's election. (Reuters)

OTHER DOMESTIC NEWS OF NOTE

-Trump is not 'dictating' legal work in Paul Weiss deal, chairman says: Paul Weiss Chairman Brad Karp said in a letter to its lawyers and staff on Sunday that the Trump administration would not be "dictating" what free legal work the powerful Wall Street law firm would provide under a deal it struck with the White House last week. The firm faced intense criticism from some lawyers in part for pledging the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services to support "mutually agreed" administration projects such as combating antisemitism and supporting veterans. (Reuters)

-2 months into Trump's second administration, the news industry faces challenges from all directions: During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called “fake news” or an “enemy of the people” by a president and his supporters? They now face a more assertive President Donald Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation's new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels. (AP)

· Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew.

· “It’s very clear what’s happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States,” said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University. “It’s really nothing like we saw in 2017,” he said. “Not that there weren’t efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren’t things that the press did to discredit themselves.”

· Supporters of the president suggest that an overdue correction is in order to reflect new ways that Americans get information and to counter overreach by reporters. Polls have revealed continued public dissatisfaction with journalists — something that has been bedeviling the industry for years.

· Tension between presidents and the Fourth Estate is nothing new — an unsurprising clash between desires to control a message and to ask probing, sometimes impertinent questions. Despite the atmosphere, the Republican president talks to reporters much more often than many predecessors, including Democrat Joe Biden, who rarely gave interviews.

-Wildfires in the Carolinas burn more than 6000 acres, prompting evacuations, a burn ban and National Guard deployment: High temperatures, strong winds and low humidity are causing a group of wildfires to spread rapidly through western North Carolina, risking further damage to areas already ravaged by Hurricane Helene. "In my career, 20-year career, this is the most fuel I've seen on the ground," North Carolina Forest Service spokesperson Jeremy Waldrop told CNN affiliate WLOS, describing the large number of leaves and trees that fell during the hurricane. It is not immediately clear how many residents would be affected by the order, though a shelter has been set up in Columbus, North Carolina. (CNN)