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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is in Belgium attending the NATO Defense Ministerial and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) meeting. At the meeting, Hegseth is conveying to leaders one of President Donald Trump’s key priorities: ending the war in Ukraine.
Across Europe and in Kyiv, leaders are concerned. Alarms were raised when the president struck a conciliatory tone with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Here’s what to know from the meeting in Belgium today:
• Ukraine in NATO: Hegseth hedged on comments he made on Wednesday, when he said it’s not realistic for Ukraine to join NATO. At a press conference on Thursday, Hegseth said “everything is on the table” in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
• Aid tied to ending the war: Hegseth appeared to tie future aid for Ukraine’s defense to their willingness to negotiate with Russia, saying on Thursday that Trump would determine “the most robust carrot or stick on either side to induce a durable peace.”
• NATO spending: The United States has been “irritated for a long time” over its higher spending on defense than other NATO members, the organization’s chief said during a press conference Thursday. NATO head Mark Rutte said that while members have increased their defense spending in recent years, it must be “much more” than the goal of 2% of countries’ GDP.
CNN is covering the NATO defense ministers’ meeting live. Follow along for the latest updates from the meeting and more news on the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Senate voted 72-28 to confirm Brooke Rollins as agriculture secretary Thursday.
Rollins’ nomination was unanimously approved by the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last week.
She is the 16th nominee to be confirmed by the Senate since President Donald Trump took office on January 20.
The chaos caused by the demise of the US Agency of International Development was on full display at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the agency held on Thursday.
There was confusion over which programs were still frozen and which had been given a waiver. Most Republicans railed on the left for allowing culture wars to infiltrate the core mission of the agency, but the panel’s former GOP chair argued that its intended function, which dispenses billions in humanitarian aid and development funding annually, needed to be protected.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast opened the hearing saying that many of the programs USAID was funding were “indefensible,” citing sex change surgeries in Guatemala, programs to teach people in Africa about climate change and efforts to teach people in Kazakhstan how to fight back against internet trolls.
But the former GOP chair of the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, defended the core mission of the agency, while arguing changes needed to be made.
“All of these programs gave USAID a black eye. And that’s unfortunate,” McCaul said. “I believe it still has a legitimate purpose to counter the threat of China and Belt and Road and our other foreign adversaries. It also has the ability to counter terrorism.”
Meanwhile, Democrats tried to personalize the chaos caused by the USAID funding freeze. Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider called the committee to hold a moment of silence as the result of a woman who fled Myanmar and died at a refugee camp in Thailand when USAID funding was cut off.
Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs asked Republicans if they would like Ebola to spread in the United States, leaving most quiet. And the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Gregory Meeks, criticized Republicans for holding the hearing with witnesses from the private sector and not from the Trump administration.
Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has now voted against three of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees, more than any other GOP senator.
McConnell, who opposed the confirmations of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and soon-to-be Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has undergone an evolution in his party, moving from establishment leader to a key swing vote.
The Kentucky Republican had a strained relationship with Trump and others in the MAGA sphere for years, in part due to his opposition to the Republican Party’s growing isolationist streak.
McConnell has instead argued that helping allies abroad, including Ukraine, is vital for US national security. Now that he is no longer the top Senate Republican, there is more room for McConnell to openly oppose some of the president’s picks.
The Senate voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a victory for President Donald Trump after Kennedy faced intense scrutiny over his controversial views on vaccines and public health policy.
The vote was 52-48. Former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, was the only Republican to vote against confirming Kennedy.
The confirmation vote highlights the extent of Trump’s influence over the Senate GOP majority, as a slate of contentious nominees who faced questions over whether they could be confirmed – including Kennedy, Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence – have been approved by Senate Republicans for top administration posts.
More on the confirmation: Kennedy will now serve as one of the nation’s leading public health officials. The US Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy will lead, is comprised of a number of key federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill, Kennedy denied being anti-vaccine, telling senators instead that he is “pro-safety.” He went on to say, “I believe that vaccines play a critical role in health care.” It’s not the first time Kennedy has said he’s not “anti-vaccine,” but a CNN fact check from 2023 pointed out that despite those claims, Kennedy has been one of the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists and has for years used false and misleading claims to undermine public confidence in vaccines that are indeed safe.
This post has been updated with more details on Kennedy’s confirmation.
A US military plane deporting 119 non-Panamanian citizens, including migrants from several Asian countries, arrived in the Central American nation Wednesday, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino said at a Thursday news conference.
The migrants, from “most diverse nationalities in the world,” were received by Panama due to a “cooperation program” with the United States and after the Trump administration made the request, Mulino said.
Some of the migrants were from China, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, he added about what was the first US deportation flight Panama has received with non-citizens.
The flight comes days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Panama and met with Mulino. During the meeting, both Mulino and Rubio discussed using Panama as a “bridge” for foreign migrants deported from the US.
Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Education, said during a confirmation hearing today that she agrees with Trump’s pledge to send authority over education back to the states, and that it would require an act of Congress to abolish the department, as he has vowed to do.
“Certainly President Trump understands that we’ll be working with Congress. We’d like to do this right. We’d like to make sure that we are presenting a plan that I think our senators could get on board with, and our Congress could get on board with, that would have a better functioning Department of Education, but certainly does require congressional action,” McMahon said.
Responding to a question about plans to downsize the department from GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, McMahon said, “Long before there was a Department of Education, we fulfilled the programs of our educational system.”
She continued, “Are there other areas, other agencies where parts of the Department of Education could better serve our students and our parents on the local level? And I am really all for the president’s mission, which is to return education to the states. I believe, as he does, that the best education is closest to the child, and not, certainly, for Washington, DC.”
“If the department is downsized, would the states and localities still receive the federal funding which they currently receive?” Cassidy asked.
McMahon responded, “Yes, it is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, it is only to have it operate more efficiently.”
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voted against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Kennedy was confirmed by a vote of 52-48 a short time later, with the former Republican leader as the only GOP vote against him.
“I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles,” McConnell wrote in a statement released following Kennedy’s confirmation.
“Individuals, parents, and families have a right to push for a healthier nation and demand the best possible scientific guidance on preventing and treating illness. But a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions does not entitle Mr. Kennedy to lead these important efforts,” the Kentucky senator added.
Kennedy has a long history of falsehoods about vaccines and other public health issues.
Remember: McConnell has also voted “no” for some of President Donald Trump’s other Cabinet picks, including Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence.
This post has been updated with comments from McConnell after Kennedy’s confirmation.
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted this morning to advance Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI, 12-10, on party lines.
The committee met for two hours before taking their vote, as senators continued to snipe back and forth over Patel’s qualifications and controversial comments.
Patel’s nomination now advances to the Senate floor.
The Senate is voting now on whether to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
A controversial nominee: Senate Democrats grilled Kennedy over his various controversial statements including his stance on vaccines during his confirmation hearings last month, and most left feeling overwhelmingly unsatisfied by the answers they received.
The Democratic lawmakers confronted Kennedy with previous statements he had made to press him on his role in a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019, his views on Covid-19, and his previous claims falsely linking vaccines to autism in children. Throughout the hearing, the Democrats repeatedly asked Kennedy to make commitments that he would not purge employees for political reasons or use his perch to personally benefit financially, without getting clear answers.
There’s a narrow majority in the Senate for the Republicans, but many key GOP senators have in recent weeks said they would support Kennedy, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Sen. John Curtis of Utah, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed reporting to this post.
A second longtime US National Institutes of Health leader is retiring from government service, just over a day after the agency’s long-serving deputy director said he was doing the same, CNN has learned.
Dr. Michael Lauer, NIH deputy director for extramural research, “announced that he will retire from federal service on Feb. 14,” acting NIH Director Dr. Matthew Memoli wrote in an announcement to agency colleagues Thursday.
“Lauer has served in this critical role since October 2015, overseeing NIH’s complex grant enterprise that successfully administers and awards nearly 60,000 grants at more than 2,500 institutions in every state, supporting the work of more than 300,000 researchers,” Memoli said in a memo obtained by CNN.
Lauer, a cardiologist and researcher, joined NIH in 2007 as director of the Division of Prevention and Population Science at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Memoli said.
The announcement about Lauer’s departure came after Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the longtime NIH deputy director, abruptly told colleagues he was retiring, effective immediately.
Sources within NIH told CNN they didn’t believe Tabak would have retired voluntarily and felt unsettled by his departure. One noted fear among other leaders that others would be forced out. They declined to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak to media.
Federal agencies across Washington are finding ways to keep funding frozen even after judges last month temporarily blocked the White House’s effort to pause trillions of dollars in federal assistance.
FEMA has clawed back $80 million intended to help New York City house migrants. The EPA has paused more than 30 grant programs, including some providing money for schools to buy electric buses. And USAID contractors say hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts have not been paid.
Trump officials say the suspensions are lawful and comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, arguing he has broad powers over federal spending as president. But multiple lawsuits now accuse the administration of violating Congress’ powers over government spending, as well as a federal judge’s orders to turn funding back on after the White House freeze late last month.
Interviews with more than two dozen administration officials, government contractors and activists – as well as court filings in lawsuits alleging the government is failing to fulfill funding lawfully appropriated by Congress – reveal the degree to which federal spending remains in a state of chaos as Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency move rapidly to axe spending, even as judges tell the government to continue letting money out the door.
That’s left US contractors in a state of upheaval, and in many cases led to furloughs and layoffs of workers at organizations that rely on government funding.
Read more about the impact of the freeze.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting to consider Kash Patel’s nomination to be the director of the FBI.
In his Senate confirmation hearing last month, Patel downplayed his past promotion of right-wing conspiracy theories and his pledges to pursue retribution against Donald Trump’s opponents.
GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the committee, defended Patel’s nomination, while Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking member of the committee, said that after reviewing the nominee’s record and questioning him during hearings he’s “even more convinced that he has neither the experience, the judgment nor the temperament to lead the FBI.”
Also happening today: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is holding a hearing this morning to examine the nomination of Linda McMahon to be secretary of education.
The Senate is expected to hold a confirmation vote on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services at 10:30 a.m. ET.
President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new round of sweeping reciprocal tariffs on Thursday, matching higher rates other nations charge to import American goods.
“Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said Sunday, explaining why he intends to enact reciprocal tariffs. He is set to share more details on the tariffs ahead of his visit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday.
Leavitt echoed Trump’s message on Wednesday, saying, “This is something he believes strongly in, and it’s very simple logic as to why the President wants to impose reciprocal tariffs.” Other nations have been “ripping off” the US, she said, “and that’s why the president believes this will be a great policy that will benefit American workers and improve our national security.”
Tariffs are a key part of Trump’s pledge to raise revenue to pay for the extension of his 2017 tax cut on top of other promised tax cuts. But the burden of tariffs could ultimately fall on American consumers, economists say. Taxed importers pass the costs on to retailers, which then raise prices for consumers.
The tariffs are likely to hit developing countries hardest, especially India, Brazil, Vietnam, and other Southeast Asian and African countries, given that they have some of the widest differences in tariff rates charged on US goods brought into their countries compared to what the US charges them.
For instance, in 2022, the US average tariff rate on imports from India was 3%, whereas India’s average tariff rate on imports from the US was 9.5%, according to World Bank data.
Read more about the expected tariffs.
Europe’s American century is over.
Two geopolitical thunderclaps on Wednesday will transform transatlantic relations.
- Donald Trump’s call with Vladimir Putin brought the Russian leader in from the cold as they hatched plans to end the war in Ukraine and agreed to swap presidential visits.
- US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to Brussels and told European allies to “take ownership of conventional security on the continent.”
The watershed highlights Trump’s “America First” ideology and his tendency to see every issue or alliance as a dollars and cents value proposition. It also underscores his freedom from establishment advisors steeped in the foreign policy mythology of the West, who he thinks thwarted his first term.
Although Hegseth recommitted to NATO, something fundamental has changed.
America’s interventions won two world wars that started in Europe and afterwards guaranteed the continent’s freedom in the face of the Soviet threat. But Trump said on the campaign trail he might not defend alliance members who haven’t invested enough in defense. He thus revived a perennial point posed most eloquently by Winston Churchill in 1940 about when “The New World, with all its power and might” will step “forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
Trump is returning to the rationale used by many presidents wary of foreign entanglements from the start of the republic, saying: “We have a little thing called an ocean in between.”
In 1953, to manage the federal response to public health and welfare, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created a Cabinet-level position to run what was then called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the precursor to the modern US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Today, its $1.7 trillion budget helps more than 83,000 employees manage a large portfolio of federal health and wellness initiatives and research.
HHS oversees the operations of 13 supporting agencies. Among the largest is the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which protects public health by collecting data, monitoring diseases and conditions, and responding to health emergencies, in addition to doing health research. Another agency, the US Food and Drug Administration, approves and regulates drugs, medical devices and vaccines to make sure they are safe and effective.
The FDA also works to keep the country’s food safe and regulates tobacco products. The National Institutes of Health does its own health research, trains researchers and is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.
HHS also runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Indian Health Services, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and departments like the Office of Global Affairs.
Even though most Americans don’t like some of the Supreme Court’s highest-profile recent decisions, a new poll Thursday found that a vast majority believe presidents must still honor them.
Eighty-three percent of Americans believe a president is required to follow the Supreme Court’s rulings, according to a Marquette Law School poll that landed as President Donald Trump has faced fierce blowback for questioning the legitimacy of court decisions.
Just under two in 10 respondents said a president has the power to ignore the Supreme Court.
Americans’ general support for the rule of law comes even as 62% oppose the high court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and a similar share disagree with last year’s ruling from the court’s conservatives that granted Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution.
Overall, the poll found that 51% of adults approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing – its highest mark in three years. Americans have more confidence in the court than they do in the presidency, Congress, the Department of Justice and the national news media, according to the poll.
Scores of firings have begun at federal agencies, with terminations of probationary employees underway at the Department of Education and the Small Business Administration, federal employees and union sources told CNN Wednesday.
The firings mark the first from the Trump administration as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency aim to dramatically shrink the federal workforce. Until now, federal employees across all government agencies had only been placed on paid administrative leave.
The move comes the same day as a federal judge allowed the administration’s deferred resignation program to proceed. About 75,000 employees have accepted the offer, which generally allows them to leave their jobs but be paid through the end of September.
A form letter sent to Department of Education employees, obtained by CNN, informing them of their termination stated: “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.”
At the Department of Education, the firings have impacted employees across the agency from the general counsel’s office, to the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services that supports programs for children with disabilities, to the Federal Student Aid office, a union source told CNN.
The source said they have heard from dozens of employees who have been fired, but the full scope of the firings was not immediately clear.
The American Federation of Government Employees represents about 160 Department of Education employees that fall under the probationary status.
It’s another busy day in US politics, including at the White House, Capitol Hill and abroad. Here’s what to know about what’s happening today:
• The president: President Donald Trump will sign executive orders in the Oval Office at 1 p.m. ET, according to the White House schedule. Trump is then set to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this afternoon in the Oval Office and hold a joint news conference. Trump is also expected to announce a new round of sweeping reciprocal tariffs on Thursday, matching higher rates other nations charge to import American goods.
• The vice president: JD Vance is traveling from the AI summit in Paris to Germany for the Munich Security Conference on Thursday. This morning, scores of people were injured after care drove into a crowd in the city.
• In the Senate: The Senate is expected to vote in the morning to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr to serve as the next secretary of health and human services. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to meet to vote Kash Patel’s nomination to be FBI Director out of the panel. Track the latest on Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and administration.
Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing to examine the nomination of Linda McMahon to be secretary of education.
• The defense secretary: Pete Hegseth is still in Belgium, where he has been attending the NATO Defense Ministerial and the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) meeting. He’ll meet with more NATO defense ministers during the day.
• In the courts: At 10:30 a.m. ET, a federal judge in Maryland is expected to hear arguments on whether he should pause a Trump move to end the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s so-called “sensitive places” policy, which barred immigration raids in places like churches and schools.
• At 11 a.m. ET, a federal judge in Washington, DC, will hear arguments over whether to indefinitely block the administration’s plans to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development.
This post has been updated with additional events.
President Donald Trump teased a reciprocal tariff announcement in a Truth Social post Thursday morning.
“But today is the big one: reciprocal tariffs” Trump wrote in his post.
On Wednesday, Trump said he could announce his reciprocal tariff plan before he meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
Trump said Sunday that he planned to slap reciprocal tariffs on “every country” that imposes import duties on the US, ““Very simply, if they charge us, we charge them,” he said while aboard Air Force One.
“THREE GREAT WEEKS, PERHAPS THE BEST EVER, BUT TODAY IS THE BIG ONE: RECIPROCAL TARIFFS!!! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AG AIN!!!” Trump’s post read.
