Judges stand firm as Trump ramps up attacks on judiciary

A group of labor unions sued the Trump administration today over the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, an independent federal agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, Radio Free Asia and other outlets.

Former Voice Of America White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara, the American Federation of Government Employees, The NewsGuild-CWA and others alleged that the Trump administration violated federal law protecting the freedom of journalists and the separation of powers when it closed the agency. (Some NBC News employees are members of The NewsGuild-CWA.)

The plaintiffs asked the court to return the agency and its employees, contractors, and grantees to their status before Trump signed an order dismantling the agency.

U.S. Agency for Global Media, the agency's acting director Victor Morales, and adviser for the agency Kari Lake, were named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York. A spokesperson for the U.S. Agency for Global Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment tonight.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley, whose union represents Voice Of America employees, said the outlet "was founded to spread the truth and fight propaganda from lawless authoritarian regimes—so it’s no surprise that the Trump administration is trying to dismantle it."

Four years after getting divorced, Beth Hyland, 54, decided it was finally time to start dating again. She had never used dating apps, but her work colleagues had found luck meeting significant others online.

“So, I thought I’d try it,” Hyland told NBC News in an interview this month. Eventually, she met someone who appeared to be her perfect match: “Richard,” who claimed to be a French project manager for a construction company, began texting and talking on the phone constantly with Hyland.

But “Richard” wasn’t who he said he was. Hyland just didn’t know it yet — and her story, and hundreds like it, would soon inspire federal legislation in Congress.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., have introduced a bill that would require dating apps and social media companies to remove or flag scammers from their platforms and issue notifications to users who interact with those accounts. 

Several federal judges expressed frustration this week with how President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing forward his sweeping agenda, as Trump and his allies got even more aggressive in their criticism of the judiciary.

Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who temporarily halted deportations being carried out under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, while also blasting the jurist on his Truth Social platform as a “grandstander” whose rulings are “inept.”

The Trump administration currently has over 15 appeals pending, including from rulings this week reining in the power of Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency.

Read the full NBC News story here

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, was grilled by town hall attendees today about the congressional response to sweeping policy changes from the administration. The town hall was in Franklin County, Iowa, this morning, with over 120 people in attendance, according to an X post by the lawmaker, 

In a clip posted by the Des Moines Register, one attendee asked: “Where is Congress?” while sharing frustrations about Elon Musk trying “to ruin the country.” 

At Sen. Chuck Grassley’s raucous town hall in Hampton, Iowans’ anger with Trump and Musk boils over.

“Why do you believe President Trump is above the law … Why have you not spoken out?” one man asked the longtime senator

A video thread: pic.twitter.com/2Ue9hNhxre

— Iowa Starting Line (@IAStartingLine) March 21, 2025

“There are 535 members of Congress. There’s only one president. It’s a 535 to one,” said the attendee before receiving applause. “When does Congress act? When does your committee on the Judiciary Committee send a subpoena to Elon Musk?” 

The lively audience interrupted Grassley multiple times, with one attendee saying, “That’s not happening” when the senator said only Cabinet members can execute Trump’s decisions, not Musk. 

Nearly all of the employees working in the Department of Homeland Security's civil rights division were fired, a DHS spokesperson confirmed to NBC News today.

The spokesperson said the offices "have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission."

"Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations," the spokesperson said in a statement. "DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement. These reductions ensure taxpayer dollars support the Department’s core mission: border security and immigration enforcement.”

The firings were first reported The New York Times.

The fired employees had worked to investigate allegations of civil rights abuses of citizens and immigrants by DHS personnel, including Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and conditions in CBP and ICE facilities.

Trump expressed confidence at the White House this afternoon that the war in Ukraine will imminently reach an end despite Russian President Vladimir Putin not yet agreeing to a ceasefire proposal negotiated in part by the U.S.

"We had a couple of good conversations today, and maybe we can get that death march stopped as soon as possible," Trump told reporters.

It is unclear exactly what conversations Trump was referencing, but earlier this week he spoke to both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump revealed after his call with Putin on Tuesday that the Russian leader agreed to temporarily pause attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Putin, however, declined to immediately accept the 30-day ceasefire proposal endorsed by Trump and accepted by Zelenskyy. The president told reporters today that he did not give Putin a deadline to accept the ceasefire proposal, but Trump was confident an agreement would be reached.

"I think we'll have one," Trump said. "They're going at it pretty heavy right now, as you probably saw both of them, but I think we'll have it done fairly soon."

Columbia University has agreed to a list of demands by the Trump administration in order to start negotiations on restoring $400 million in federal funding that was stripped from the university earlier this month.

The Trump administration canceled the university’s federal grants on March 7, accusing the New York school of "inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students." The abrupt cancellation of funds will end dozens, if not hundreds, of the university’s cutting edge, medical and scientific research projects.

But last week, the administration sent a letter to the university laying out nine demands that Columbia needed to accept by Thursday "as a precondition" to potentially restore funds and save the research.

On Friday, the university's interim president, Katrina Armstrong, announced that the school has responded and outlined its progress to "ensure uninterrupted academic activities."

A federal judge examining the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador has vowed to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around.

Chief Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine if the administration ignored his turnaround order last weekend when at least two planeloads of immigrants were still in flight.

“I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during a hearing for a lawsuit challenging the deportations.

Law enforcement officials and domestic extremism experts say they have found no evidence that a series of attacks on Tesla vehicles and dealerships are coordinated despite such claims from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.

At least 10 Tesla dealerships, charging stations and facilities have been hit by vandals, many of whom have lit cars on fire, while a growing collection of videos posted to social media have shown people defacing and damaging Tesla vehicles. One website appeared to encourage people to target Tesla vehicles, publishing a map with the information of dozens of Tesla owners and Tesla facilities. It’s unknown who started the site.

The attacks have come as Musk has emerged as one of the brightest flashpoints of an already tumultuous second Trump administration, leading a sweeping effort to cut large swaths of the federal government. Musk has decried the attacks on Teslas, and on Thursday claimed on his social media platform X that the attacks were “coordinated.” He did not provide evidence.

A group funded by billionaire Elon Musk is offering Wisconsin voters $100 to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” a move that comes two weeks before the state’s Supreme Court election and after the political action committee made a similar proposal last year in battleground states.

Musk’s political action committee America PAC announced the petition in a post on X on Thursday night. It promises $100 for each Wisconsin voter who signs the petition and another $100 for each signer they refer.

The campaign for Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, said Musk was trying to buy votes ahead of the April 1 election. The offer was made two days after early voting started in the hotly contested race between Crawford and Brad Schimel, the preferred candidate of Musk and Republicans. The winner of the election will determine whether the court remains under liberal control or flips to a conservative majority.

Read the full story from The Associated Press here.

President Donald Trump on Friday said there will be “flexibility” on his reciprocal tariff plan, even as he seemed to oppose the idea of making exceptions for the forthcoming duties.

“People are coming to me and talking about tariffs, and a lot of people are asking me if they could have exceptions,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

“And once you do that for one, you have to do that for all,” he said.

Trump, an avowed fan of tariffs, also insisted that he did not change his mind when he gave top automakers a one-month exemption on a prior round of import duties in early March.

The General Services Administration is launching a new artificial intelligence tool for government use, designed to support staff at the agency in their regular, daily work, with the goal of rolling it out to other federal agencies in the near future.

GSA began building the technology 18 months ago under the Biden administration, focusing on the security and privacy of the AI tool, a GSA spokesperson tells NBC News.

The decision to develop the tool internally was driven by concerns within the department about the risks of using commercially available AI tools, according to a GSA official familiar with the development of the tool. The tool was ultimately built internally to ensure it meets government security requirements.

Read the full story here on NBCNews.com.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., are demanding information from the Defense Department about Elon Musk's meeting this morning at the Pentagon.

"Did the Pentagon today provide Mr. Musk with a top-secret briefing today on U.S. war plans for China?" Warren and Duckworth asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.

They sought additional details about the briefing, including whether the Pentagon changed its original plans for the meeting after initial public reports came out about it. The two senators also asked what clearance processes were in place for Musk to receive the information that he did.

Read the full NBC News story here.

The Pentagon says the new jet fleet will have stealth and penetration capabilities that far exceed its current fleet and is essential in a potential conflict with China.

Known as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, the manned jet will serve as a quarterback to a fleet of future drone aircraft that would be able to penetrate China’s air defenses. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the future fleet “sends a very clear, direct message to our allies that we’re not going anywhere.”

But critics have questioned the cost and necessity of the program. The Pentagon is still struggling to fully produce its most advanced jet and its future stealth bomber will have many of the same advanced technologies.

Trump said this afternoon that people who were deported to El Salvador by his administration went through a rigorous vetting process.

"I was told that they went through a very strong vetting process, and that that will also be continuing in El Salvador, and if there’s anything like that we would certainly want to find out," Trump said in response to a reporter asking about reports that some who were deported weren't criminals.

"These were a bad group. This was a bad group, and they were in bad areas, and they were with a lot of other people that were absolutely killers, murderers, and people that were really bad with the worst records you’ve ever seen," Trump added. "And, but we will continue that process, absolutely we don’t want to make that kind of a mistake."

Families of the Venezuelan immigrants who were recently deported say they were shocked to see their loved ones sent to a megaprison in El Salvador and deny that they have links to the Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, NBC News reported this week.

Days after the release of thousands of pages of documents on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Trump declined to specify who was ultimately responsible for his death.

“We gave everything and the rest is for you to look at,” Trump said. “We’re doing it with [Martin Luther King, Jr.], too.”

In his Oval Office remarks, a reporter asked Trump about NBC News' reporting that Biden is eager to help the Democratic Party get back on its feet by fundraising, campaigning or whatever else is needed.

Trump said he'd welcome it.

"I hope so," Trump said.

Trump still uses his former opponent as a frequent opponent. He has invoked Biden in some form more than 400 times since his Jan. 20 inauguration, according to an NBC News analysis.

Trump said student loans would be handled by the Small Business Administration, saying “it will be serviced much better than it has in the past.”

And he said programs involving special needs and nutrition would shift to the Department of Health and Human Services, adding that “I think that will work out very well.”

Trump announced the changes at the beginning of an Oval Office event focused on developing a next-generation fighter jet. His executive order pushing for the dismantling of the Education Department meets a longtime Republican goal.

A group of protestors amassed outside their local Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Thursday to oppose the sprawling cuts the Trump administration is making to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The protestors, holding posterboard signs that read "Keep your promise" and "Hands off our Veterans," waved and cheered as cars passed by in an effort to draw attention to the thousands of VA employees who have been fired from the agency chiefly responsible for providing health care and other critical services to millions of veterans.

Carly Rosehammond, a Saginaw City Councilwoman, told NBC 25 that now is the time for the nation to stand up for the veterans who fought for its freedoms.

"They’re coming after nurses, they’re coming after Medicaid, they’re coming after Social Security offices, those are people that need those services every single day-- that’s what we as voters voted for,” Rosehammond said.

The Trump administration has appealed more than 15 decisions by federal judges to circuit courts since Jan. 20.

That includes one appeal filed overnight by Elon Musk and DOGE, appealing Judge Theodore Chuang’s order to reinstate USAID systems and access, to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The administration has also appealed, for example, a ruling to reinstate National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, a Democrat, as well as another ruling to reinstate Cathy Harris, who was fired as a Democratic member of the Merit Systems Protection Board.

Trump has been railing against federal judges who have blocked actions by his administration. This morning, he wrote on Truth Social, "No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

Trump denied a New York Times report that his adviser Elon Musk is set to be briefed by the Pentagon today on the U.S. military’s plan for any potential war with China.

“China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform late last night.

Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s effort to slash the size of the federal government, is scheduled to visit the Pentagon today for a meeting and briefing, three defense officials told NBC News. Two of the officials said Musk was expected to be briefed on China but that the briefing would be unclassified. None of the officials could confirm the Times report, which cited two U.S. officials.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also denied the report, saying in a post on X that it would be “an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production.”

Tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk is scheduled to visit the Pentagon today for a briefing that will include a discussion on China, according to two defense officials. 

The briefing will be unclassified, the officials said.

The New York Times reported last night that Musk would be briefed on the U.S. military’s plans for any potential war with China, citing two U.S. officials. One official also confirmed that the briefing would be focused on China, and another only confirmed that Musk would be at the Pentagon today, according to the Times’ report.

Read the full NBC News story here.

Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks at the Oval Office at 11 a.m. ET with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The White House did not specify the focus of their remarks.

In the evening, Trump is slated to head to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Raphael Garcia, an analyst at the Department of Veterans Affairs who was abruptly fired last month amid President Donald Trump’s sweeping push to shrink the federal workforce, learned this week that he was being reinstated following court orders from two federal judges.

But that news did not end the professional limbo that has defined Garcia’s life for over a month. He is not actually back on the job. Instead, he has been placed on administrative leave while the Trump administration appeals rulings from those two judges.

Garcia is one of 24,000 probationary federal workers who have been on a career roller-coaster ride as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency attempts to reshape the federal bureaucracy. These workers have been unceremoniously fired and rehired, but some remain in the dark about what comes next.

Read the full NBC News story here.