Reuters United States Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

US to utilize AI to withdraw visas of trainees it sees as Hamas advocates, Axios reports

The U.S. State Department will utilize artificial intelligence to withdraw visas of foreign trainees who it perceives as fans of Palestinian Hamas militants, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior State Department authorities. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to fight antisemitism and has vowed to deport non-citizen university student and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months in the middle of Israel’s military assault on Gaza after Hamas’ October 2023 attack.

CIA fires an undefined number of new officers

The Central Intelligence Agency fired a multitude of current hires this week, three individuals acquainted with the matter said, cuts that existing and previous U.S. intelligence officers warned would run the risk of damaging U.S. national security. The shootings under U.S. President Donald Trump’s brand-new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, come as Trump commands enormous federal workforce reductions supervised by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Veterans, farm groups slam Trump cuts at Democrat-run Arizona city center

Arizona farm groups and veterans combined by Democratic chief law officers blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s federal cuts, stating the president was neglecting judges who blocked his executive orders and damaging former service members. They spoke at a sometimes raucous town hall on Wednesday night organized by the country’s 23 Democratic lawyers basic, who have filed suits to ask judges to obstruct a string of Trump executive orders, including his suspension of trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and financial backing.

‘We’re in a dark space,’ US judge says on increasing threats

Threats against U.S. judges are rising and attorneys must do more to push back versus heated rhetoric, four federal judges stated in a panel conversation on Thursday. Speaking at an American Bar Association meeting on white collar criminal activity in Miami, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware of Las Vegas federal court said threats against the judiciary had actually increased “tremendously.”

Trump’s FDA candidate tepidly backs function for vaccine advisors in safeguarded Senate appearance

Martin Makary, President Donald Trump’s candidate to run the U.S. FDA, told lawmakers on Thursday he would assemble a committee of vaccine consultants but said he would reassess which clinical problems require their input. It was one of a number of problems on which Makary, a Johns Hopkins physician, kept his cards close to his chest while dealing with the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for 2 hours.

Trump informs cabinet secretaries they, not Musk, supervise of personnel cuts

U.S. President Donald Trump told his cabinet members on Thursday that they, not Elon Musk, have the last word on staffing and policy at their agencies, according to a source knowledgeable about the matter. The billionaire Tesla CEO and his Department of Government Efficiency will play an advisory role only, Trump stated, according to the source. Musk was in the room and told the cabinet he was good with Trump’s plan, the source said.

Push for long-term US daytime saving time frozen as Trump states Americans are divided

A three-year congressional effort to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States appears to have stopped, with President Donald Trump saying on Thursday that Americans are uniformly divided over the concern. Daylight conserving time – putting the clocks forward one hour throughout the summer season half of the year to maximize the longer nights – has been in location in nearly all of the United States considering that the 1960s, but proponents have actually pressed to make it year-round.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs deals with new indictment, is accused of ‘required labor’

U.S. district attorneys on Thursday unveiled a new indictment against Sean “Diddy” Combs, implicating the hip-hop mogul of requiring employees to work long hours and threatening to punish those who did not help in his two-decade sex trafficking plan. Combs, 55, still faces a scheduled May 5 trial in Manhattan on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.

US federal employees countered at Trump mass firings with class action problems

U.S. federal government staff members who have actually been fired in the Trump administration’s purge of recently worked with employees are responding with class action-style complaints claiming that the mass firings are illegal and 10s of countless individuals ought to get their tasks back. Lawyers at 2 firms said on Thursday that they had filed six appeals with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board considering that last week and, together with other law office, plan to cause 15 more on an agency-by-agency basis on behalf of big groups of employees who were fired in recent weeks.

Trump administration should make some foreign help payments by Monday, judge rules

The Trump administration need to make some payments to foreign help professionals and grant recipients by 6 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Monday, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed the administration’s request to prevent a due date for the payments. The judgment by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali came at the end of a hearing in a suit by professionals and non-profit grant receivers challenging President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging freeze of U.S. foreign aid, a day after the groups got a boost from the Supreme Court. It the government to pay invoices submitted by the complainants in the case before February 13.