Trump Administration Updates: U.S. Suspends All Military Aid to Ukraine, Trump Official Says (2025)

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The order came just days after Trump had a heated exchange with Zelensky in the Oval Office.

The officials said the directive would be in effect until Mr. Trump determined that Ukraine had demonstrated a good-faith commitment to peace negotiations with Russia.

Mr. Trump’s decision dramatically escalates the breach between Washington and Kyiv, at a critical moment in the conflict. The most immediate beneficiary of the move is President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. If the suspension is lengthy, he can use the time to press for further territorial gains. And he may well decide to hold back from any negotiations at all, figuring that any prolonged dispute between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky will only strengthen his position, either on the battlefield or when cease-fire talks ever take place.

Mr. Trump’s move has few direct precedents in recent American history. While the United States has paused the transfer of specific weapons systems to allies and partners, such as President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s decision to suspend deliveries of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that he feared could be used against civilians in Gaza, a full cutoff is essentially an ultimatum. It forces Mr. Zelensky to agree to a cease-fire on terms Mr. Trump dictates, or condemns the country to larger battlefield losses.

The suspension also puts the United States in direct opposition to its major NATO allies. Most of the largest European nations, led by France, Britain and Germany, have pledged to step up aid to Ukraine in recent days, siding with Mr. Zelensky in his dispute with the Trump administration. But they simply do not have the stockpiles to make up the difference in the short term.

Mr. Trump’s directive, which was reported earlier by Bloomberg News, also halts deliveries of equipment from Pentagon stockpiles as aid through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provides funds that Kyiv can use only to buy new military hardware directly from U.S. defense companies. It was unclear what exactly Mr. Zelensky would need to do for Mr. Trump to resume the military assistance.

Mr. Trump has increasingly aligned himself with Mr. Putin and his narrative about the war in Ukraine. He falsely claimed that it was Ukraine that started the war and has called Mr. Zelensky, who was democratically elected, a “dictator.”

He has called Mr. Putin “smart” and “cunning,” but declined to call him a dictator. And Mr. Trump has spoken in recent days about how he and Mr. Putin have been bonded by going through the shared ordeal of the investigation into Moscow’s attempts to tilt the election eight years ago to Mr. Trump. American intelligence officials concluded at that time that Mr. Putin’s intelligence agencies worked actively to swing the 2016 election in Mr. Trump’s favor, a conclusion that Mr. Trump has rejected and called part of the “Russia hoax.”

The tensions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky exploded into the open on Friday, when the two men were supposed to sign a deal at the White House for Ukraine to turn over rare mineral rights to repay U.S. military aid over the past three years. Instead, Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated Mr. Zelensky in front of the cameras for not being grateful enough for U.S. support.

The fate of the minerals deal remained unclear.

Mr. Trump said on Monday that he did not think the minerals deal was dead, calling it a “great deal for us,” but that there was one thing he needed to see from Mr. Zelensky to restart negotiations.

“I just think he should be more appreciative,” Mr. Trump told reporters.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump seized on comments Mr. Zelensky made over the weekend when he predicted that a peace deal with Russia was “still very, very far away.”

“This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelenskyy, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.

On Monday, several members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet continued to join with allies in suggesting that Mr. Zelensky was responsible for the diplomatic breakdown, and should show remorse for the Oval Office episode.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on CNN on Monday that it was “way too far” for Mr. Zelensky to demand, as part of any deal, “reparations” and the return of seized land from Russia and security guarantees.

“You’ve got to say, ‘We love America, we appreciate America, we want you by our side, and if you think we should have peace, we should have peace,’” Mr. Lutnick said.

“That’s not a peacemaker,” Mr. Lutnick said of Mr. Zelensky, “that’s a troublemaker.”

Mr. Lutnick suggested that Mr. Trump was still committed to brokering a deal between Ukraine and Russia, and “beat both sides down to get them to the table.”

In the aftermath of the Oval Office meeting, the Trump administration immediately began having discussions about cutting off or reducing military assistance, training and possibly military intelligence support for Ukraine, a senior official said on Friday. It was unclear late Monday whether Mr. Trump also directed officials to curtail intelligence sharing, although one senior official said it was still flowing — for now.

Mr. Trump convened a meeting of members of his national security team on Monday to discuss the administration’s options.

The decision comes at a critical moment in Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression, and as Mr. Trump has made clear in recent weeks that the days of isolating Moscow are over.

Through its own weapons production and arms deliveries from Europe, Ukraine could withstand a U.S. shutdown from some weeks, even a few months, U.S. officials and analysts said on Monday.

“The reality is that Ukraine is far less dependent on the United States for its day-to-day combat needs than it was a year ago,” said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has visited Ukraine several times since the war started three years ago.

But if the halt in deliveries went longer, Ukraine would lose its supply of some advanced weapons, including advanced air-defense systems, surface-to-surface ballistic missiles and long-range rocket artillery. The United States also provides Ukraine with parts, maintenance and technical support.

Mr. Zelensky has said that cutting off military assistance would be a devastating blow but would not end the fighting.

“The contribution from the United States to Ukraine’s defensive capability and security is now around 30 percent,” he said during an interview last month. “You can imagine what would happen to us without this crucial 30 percent.”

U.S. military aid stopped flowing to Ukraine last year for several months after Mr. Trump pressed his Republican allies in Congress to withhold assistance.

The effects were first felt in the nightly aerial bombardments that Russia directed at energy infrastructure across the country. With the launching tubes of American air defense systems empty, air defense teams could do little to defend against Russia’s most sophisticated missiles as they laid waste to the nation’s thermal power plants.

As aid was delayed month after month, metro stations in the capital were crowded with families seeking shelter as the blanket of protection provided by American Patriot batteries began to fray.

The impact on the front took more time to be felt. But as supplies dwindled and American-made Howitzers fell silent, Ukrainian commanders fighting in the area said they were forced to ration ammunition.

Adam Entous contributed reporting from Washington, and Marc Santora from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Enrich’s memos had advised that because of the Trump administration’s efforts to freeze foreign aid payments, the agency had been “prevented from delivering life-saving activities,” including in H.I.V. prevention programs and others that had been granted a waiver by the administration. The declaration made a significant symbolic statement, coming from a senior government official in support of a lawsuit against the agency he works for.

Enrich said he had received an email placing him on administrative leave on Sunday and then released the memos documenting evidence that the administration had refused to comply with a court order to release the funds, and had repeatedly dragged its feet.

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The Trump administration is said to have dropped a lawsuit over emissions of a toxic chemical in Louisiana.

The 2023 lawsuit was among several enforcement actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of poor and minority communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of toxic pollution.

The Denka plant is located in the predominantly Black community of LaPlace, La., in a region so dense with industrial facilities that it is known as “Cancer Alley.” Chloroprene is used to produce neoprene, a synthetic rubber that is found in automotive parts, hoses, beer cozies, orthopedic braces and electric cables.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The agency intends to ask the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana this week to dismiss the lawsuit, according to the two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.

The lawsuit had given the neighboring community a measure of hope that pollution levels might finally come down, said Robert Taylor, a founder of Concerned Citizens of St John Parish, a community group.

“The fact that they may drop this is very hard for us,” said Mr. Taylor, who has been fighting pollution from the plant for more than a decade. “We need to regroup and revitalize ourselves and get ready for a very difficult struggle.”

In 2023, the E.P.A. and Justice Department sued Denka, arguing that the plant posed an “imminent and substantial endangerment to public health and welfare” and should be compelled to reduce its emissions.

In announcing the lawsuit, the E.P.A. said that it had found that children under 18 accounted for about 20 percent of the population living within two and a half miles of the Denka plant. More than 300 children who attended an elementary school located less than 500 feet from the Denka facility had been exposed to chloroprene emissions, the agency said.

Children under the age of 16 are particularly vulnerable to mutagenic carcinogens like chloroprene, the E.P.A. has found.

Executives at Denka, a Japanese company that acquired the elastomer plant from DuPont in 2015, could not be reached for comment. Paul Nathanson, a senior principal at Bracewell, a law firm that has represented Denka, declined to comment.

David Uhlmann, who led enforcement at the E.P.A. under the Biden administration, said that dismissing the case “makes clear where the Trump administration stands, fighting for polluters at the expense of a community that simply wants to breathe clean air.”

The Biden administration made environmental justice — the idea that all communities should be protected from environmental harms — a priority. Michael S. Regan, the second Black person to serve as E.P.A. administrator, took a “journey to justice” tour in 2021 to low-income communities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as part of a push to increase monitoring and enforcement of federal rules regarding air and water quality. He promised “strong action,” later buoyed by $60 billion provided by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for environmental justice programs.

The Trump administration is now eliminating government programs aimed at environmental justice, and, last month, the E.P.A. placed 168 employees who work on the issue on administrative leave.

Mr. Trump has filled the top ranks of the E.P.A. with former lobbyists and lawyers for the oil and chemical industries, many of whom worked in his first administration to weaken climate and pollution protections.

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In his speech to Congress, Trump is expected to boast about DOGE cuts and Ukraine.

“He’s going to talk about the great things he’s done: The border’s secure, the waste he’s finding with DOGE,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who speaks frequently with Mr. Trump. “He’s going to keep laying out his vision, where he wants the country to go.”

For Mr. Trump, it will be a remarkable return to a chamber — and a prime-time, nationwide audience — he last addressed five years ago, before voters ousted him from office and replaced him with Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Trump’s return has set in motion a rapid-fire series of actions designed to overturn decades of policy and diplomacy.

During his first term, the president delivered an annual speech to Congress that included a mix of exaggerations and grievance-filled attacks on his enemies. He is poised to do the same again on Tuesday night, using one of the largest platforms that any modern president gets during his time in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump hinted on Monday that he might use the speech to extend his public feud with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after the Oval Office blowup between the two leaders last week. Asked by a reporter whether a deal to share rare-earth minerals was still possible after the shouting, Mr. Trump said that “I’ll let you know,” adding: “We’re making a speech, you probably heard.”

Later he said of Mr. Zelensky: “I just think he should be more appreciative.”

Mr. Trump is facing a litany of lawsuits over his sweeping executive actions, cuts to the federal government and layoffs of federal workers, which have been spearheaded by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a top adviser to the president.

The resistance to Mr. Musk’s aggressive efforts, especially by courts around the country, has frustrated the president and those around him. During his first term, Mr. Trump often lashed out at judges when they stood in the way of his agenda.

The president’s critics are bracing for more of the same on Tuesday as they struggle to slow down the pace of firings and spending cuts at federal agencies.

Democrats plan to highlight how those cuts to the federal government have hurt veterans. Representative Brad Schneider, Democrat of Illinois, said he would bring Adam Mulvey, an Army veteran who served the country for 20 years, as his guest.

Mr. Mulvey was one month shy of ending his probationary period at his job at Lovell Federal Health Care Center when he was fired on Feb. 13 in the middle of the night. He was one of nearly 6,000 veterans who were fired during two weeks in February.

“It is disgraceful that Elon Musk and a group of unelected, unvetted DOGE bros are treating veterans like Adam with arrogant disrespect and utter disregard,” Mr. Schneider said.

Republicans were expecting Mr. Trump to focus on his administration’s success cracking down on the border. There has been a dramatic drop in the number of people gathering at the U.S. border and trying to cross.

Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, said she planned to invite Scott Root, the father of Sarah Root, as her guest. Ms. Root was killed in 2016, the night of her college graduation, by a drunken driver who was in the country illegally.

“After a nine-year battle for change, this week we remember Sarah and the fact that under the leadership of President Trump, our nation’s laws will no longer prioritize illegal immigrants over Americans,” Ms. Ernst said.

While Mr. Trump is barreling ahead with executive actions, his legislative agenda is moving more slowly through Congress. The president is seeking to pass some $4 trillion in tax cuts and get new funding for deportation efforts, while hard-line members of the House are seeking deep cuts to pay for that agenda. It is not clear where those cuts will come from, particularly as proposals to cut into Medicaid have proved unpopular.

The president has said repeatedly since Inauguration Day that his administration has turned around what he claimed was a failing economy, ignoring strong job growth throughout the four years of Mr. Biden’s presidency. Mr. Trump is likely to talk about the tariffs he is planning to impose on Canada, Mexico, China and European countries, even though many economists say they fear that the result could be inflation and supply disruption in the United States.

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On Dec. 30, former President Joseph R. Biden approved $1.25 billion in arms and equipment to draw down from Pentagon stockpiles over the next six months, giving Ukraine’s military a reliable source of weaponry as the Trump administration took office. The shipments have been sent to Ukraine about every two weeks since then, meeting Ukraine’s needs while not placing a strain on Pentagon stockpiles, as new orders gradually replenish the American inventories. The Pentagon has transferred roughly one-third of those shipments, meaning Trump’s directive freezes the remaining two-thirds.

Democrats block a bill to bar transgender girls from female sports teams.

It mirrors one of the goals of an executive order Mr. Trump signed last month titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which charged the Education Department with changing its interpretation of civil rights laws so that schools that failed to bar transgender athletes could lose federal funding.

Senate Republicans argued it was essential to protecting girls from predatory men encroaching on their private spaces and seeking to gain an unfair athletic advantage on the basis of sex, even as they hinted that the measure was intended to lay a political trap for Democrats.

“Democrats can stand for women or stand with a radical transgender ideology,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said on Monday. If they opposed the legislation, he said, “they’ll have to answer to the women and girls they vote to disenfranchise.”

Democrats denounced the legislation as a craven effort by Republicans to wring political advantage from a small but vulnerable population of transgender children that would ultimately put at risk the girls it purported to protect.

“What Republicans are doing today is inventing a problem to stir up a culture war and divide people against each other and distract people from what they’re actually doing,” said Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii. He called the bill “totally irrelevant to 99.9 percent of all people across the country.”

The measure was sponsored by Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama and a former high school girls basketball coach, who framed it as an example of how Democrats were out of touch with a mainstream point of view. On the Senate floor, G.O.P. lawmakers cited polls showing a majority of Americans, including most Democrats, believed that biological males should not be allowed to play women’s sports.

Many congressional Democrats have agreed that there are real concerns about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports at the highest levels. But they have argued that athletic associations should be making those decisions, not lawmakers passing broad bills at the federal level that lump together competitive athletes and young children who simply want to participate in school activities with their friends.

More than two dozen states already bar transgender athletes from participating in school sports, whether in K-12 schools or at the collegiate level.

On Monday, Senate Democrats argued that the legislation was not only an attack on basic human dignity, but also a waste of time. Of more than 500,000 N.C.A.A. athletes, they noted, fewer than 10 identified as transgender.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, also noted that the bill had no enforcement mechanism and “could subject women and girls to physical inspection by an adult if someone from an opposing team accused them of being transgender.”

Out of power and in the political wilderness, congressional Democrats have few levers to pull to stand in the way of the Republican governing trifecta. But the filibuster remains one of their final ways of blocking legislation that otherwise could make its way to Mr. Trump’s desk for his signature.

Earlier this year, Senate Democrats also blocked a measure that would subject some doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties. They blocked a Republican bill to impose sanctions on officials affiliated with the International Criminal Court, which Republicans have wanted to rebuke for the decision of its top prosecutor to bring war crimes charges against top Israeli leaders for their military offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

There were 43 detainees on Thursday and then an ICE aircraft flew in an undisclosed figure of dozens more on Friday before transferring all but 20 to an ICE processing center in Louisiana on Sunday, according to a U.S. official familiar with the operation.

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Lech Walesa joins Polish political prisoners in voicing ‘horror’ at Trump’s scolding of Zelensky.

“Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards and we had none,” the letter said, a reference to President Trump’s Oval Office rebuke to Mr. Zelensky that “you don’t have the cards.”

Communist functionaries, the letter continued, “demanded that we stop our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us.” When President Zelensky insisted in the Oval Office on Friday that security guarantees were needed to make any peace deal with Russia last, Mr. Trump slapped him down, saying, “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people.”

The letter — signed by Mr. Walesa, the 1980s leader of the Solidarity trade union, and more than 30 prominent former Polish political detainees — was posted on Mr. Walesa’s Facebook page, along with a sometimes imprecise English translation and an old photograph of him meeting with a grinning, tuxedo-clad Mr. Trump.

It expressed angry disbelief that Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance had berated Mr. Zelensky for not thanking them enough for helping Ukraine.

“Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world,” Mr. Walesa, who served as Poland’s first elected president after the collapse of Communism, and other signatories said, adding, “We do not understand how the leader of a country that is a symbol of the free world cannot see this.”

While many European leaders were dismayed and deeply alarmed by Mr. Zelensky’s treatment in the Oval Office, they have avoided criticizing Mr. Trump in public, fearful of stirring his wrath and deepening his anger at Ukraine. Mr. Walesa’s letter brought Europe’s feelings into the open, particularly its alarm that the United States under Mr. Trump is veering away from standing up to dictatorial bullies to side with them.

The letter recalled the vital role that President Ronald Reagan had played in supporting Moscow’s opponents in the 1980s and bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. “President Reagan was aware that in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, millions of enslaved people suffered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values with freedom,” it said.

Pleading for the United States not to turn its back on decades of support for opponents of tyranny, the letter warned, “The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to maintain distance from democratic values ​​and its European allies, it ended up threatening itself.”

Anatol Magdziarz contributed reporting.

The Senate votes along party lines to confirm Linda McMahon as education secretary.

Ms. McMahon, 76, told lawmakers during her confirmation process that she “wholeheartedly” agreed with President Trump’s “mission” to eliminate the Education Department. During her hearing last month, she argued that most Americans did, too, and that she was ready to make it happen.

But there appears to be significant public opposition to getting rid of the department.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans said last week that they opposed eliminating the agency, according to the NPR/PBS News/Maristpoll. In North Carolina, one of seven battleground states that Mr. Trump swept in November, a similar share, 63 percent, also said they opposed abolishing the agency, according to a Meredith Collegepolllast month.

The Education Department has already been a top target of the aggressive government overhaul project overseen by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key Trump adviser. At least 60 employees have been suspended as part of the administration’s purge of diversity efforts, and Mr. Musk’s team has discussed the possibility of an executive order that would effectively shut down the department.

On Friday, employees in the department were given a “one-time offer” of up to $25,000 if they agreed to retire or resign by the end of the day on Monday. The message, sent by Jacqueline Clay, the department’s chief human capital officer, said the offer was being made before “a very significant reduction in force.”

Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats and is their top representative on the Senate Education Committee, said the department provides “enormously important resources” to children in high-poverty school districts and those with disabilities.

“We must make the Department of Education stronger and more efficient, not to dismantle it as Trump has proposed,” Mr. Sanders said in a statement.

Among the first 20 Trump nominations confirmed by the Senate, Ms. McMahon is the sixth whom Democrats unanimously opposed. The others were Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense; Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health; Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director; and Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce.

The Education Department’s primary role has been sending federal money to public schools, administering college financial aid and managing federal student loans. The department tracks student achievement, but does not dictate what is taught in public schools. With about 4,200 employees as of September, the agency’s work force was the smallest of the 15 cabinet-level executive departments.

Ms. McMahon has said she would push for more local control of education programs and to “free American students from the education bureaucracy” by pushing for school choice programs.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Republican chairman of the Education Committee, said Ms. McMahon would help streamline the department.

“We need a strong leader at the department who will get our education system back on track,” Mr. Cassidy said after the confirmation vote. “Secretary McMahon is the right person for the job.”

Ms. McMahon received a teaching certificate, but she never taught. She has been a member of the board of trustees at Sacred Heart University, a private school in Connecticut with about 8,500 students, for about 16 years. She and her husband, Vince McMahon, from whom she is separated, have donated millions to the Catholic university, where the student commons bears her name.

She also served for about a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education, even though some state lawmakers questioned her experience for the position and said she ran a wrestling company that promoted violent and sexual images to children.

Her nomination to run the Education Department prompted a new round of concerns about her experience, as critics have said she is ill-prepared to navigate the effects that Mr. Trump’s politically charged agenda may have on the nation’s schools.

Mr. Trump told reporters last month that the Education Department was “a big con job” and that “I’d like to close it immediately.” Mr. Musk has said the administration terminated 89 contracts worth $881 million at the agency.

At her confirmation hearing, Ms. McMahon presented a more nuanced version of potential changes. She said the administration planned to “reorient” the department while acknowledging that some of the agency’s largest programs would remain in place. She also said core programs, such as Title I money for low-income schools and Pell grants for the poorest college students, would not be eliminated.

She also agreed that an act of Congress would be required to abolish the department, which was created in 1979 to ensure equal access to education, help parents and local communities improve the quality of education and coordinate federal education programs.

A more likely target for cuts was federal money to schools and colleges that defy Mr. Trump’s orders seeking to bar transgender women from competing in women’s sports, and doing away with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Responding to a question at the hearing last week from Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, Ms. McMahon said schools should allow events celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but was more circumspect about classes that focused on Black history.

“I’m not quite certain and I’d like to look into it further,” Ms. McMahon said.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. McMahon served as the head of the Small Business Administration until stepping down in 2019 to run a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump. That super PAC, America First Action, spent more than $185 million ahead of Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020.

During the 2024 election, Ms. McMahon was among the largest contributors to Mr. Trump's campaign. She and her husband contributed more than $20 million to Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and associated PACs, according todata compiled by Open Secrets, a government transparency group.

After Mr. Trump was voted out of office in 2020, Ms. McMahon became chairwoman of the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank heavily staffed by former Trump officials. She has also taken on roles with other conservative policy organizations and The Daily Caller, a conservative news site.

She is paid $18,400 every three months by the Trump Media & Technology Group, where she is a director. and has received thousands of shares in the company as compensation for her work. The group is the parent company of Mr. Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social.

Ms. McMahon has vowed to resign from those positions and divest from Mr. Trump’s business.

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Warren Buffett describes tariffs as an ‘act of war’ in a CBS interview.

The rebuke of President Trump’s tariff plans, a core part of his new administration’s economic policy, came just days before sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico were expected to go into effect. Mr. Trump said on Monday that tariffs that will add a 25 percent fee on all imports from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10 percent for Chinese goods, would take effect on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump had delayed the tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports for a month, and the apparent confirmation that they would be imposed this time sent stock prices reeling. The S&P 500 fell nearly 2 percent, its worst day of trading so far this year.

Berkshire Hathaway has recently built up a large investment in Treasury bills, government debt that’s a less risky alternative to corporate bonds and stocks. “You always have to ask that question in economics: And then what?” Mr. Buffett said in the interview. “Prices will be higher 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now.”

He was also asked about his thoughts on Elon Musk’s involvement in Mr. Trump’s administration, but mostly deflected the question.

“I better not get into that,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve talked to Elon a few times.”

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Melania Trump appears at the Capitol to lobby for an online safety measure.

“The widespread presence of abusive behavior in the digital domain affects the daily lives of our children, families, and communities,” Ms. Trump said, facing a phalanx of cameras and more than a dozen reporters. “Addressing this issue is essential for fostering a safe and supportive environment for our young people.”

The bill is cosponsored by Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota.

Dating to the first Trump administration, Ms. Trump has largely shied away from giving speeches at public events, and was rarely seen on the campaign trail in 2024.

But she has shown signs that she might be more visible during her husband’s second term. Last year, she published a memoir that offered a few glimpses into her marriage to Mr. Trump and their time in the White House. She is the subject — and a producer — of an Amazon documentary. And she has declared online safety her priority over the next four years, tapping into an issue that has broad bipartisan support.

The Take It Down Act passed the Senate three weeks ago and House leaders, including Speaker Mike Johnson and Representative Steve Scalise, the majority leader, said they would support swift passage of the bill. Critics of the bill have argued that the legislation is too broad and could capture consensual sexual content, as well as other protected speech.

The bill “threatens free expression, user privacy, and due process without addressing the problem it claims to solve,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, wrote last week.

The afternoon slump in the markets followed Mr. Trump’s statement at the White House on Monday that he would move forward on Tuesday with broad 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the United States’ two biggest trading partners. Mr. Trump has also said he would impose an additional 10 percent tariff on goods from China, on top of the 10 percent that took effect last month.

Investors fear that the tariffs will raise prices in the United States, pushing the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated for longer and risking tipping the economy into a downturn.

Monday’s sell-off came after the stock market had already lost some of its shine in February. The S&P 500 ended about 1.4 percent lower for the month, as the Trump administration’s policy priorities and weak consumer sentiment made investors uneasy.

On Monday, the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies, which are typically more exposed to the ebb and flow of the economy, fell 3.1 percent, pushing further into its own correction; the index is down more than 14 percent since it peaked in late November. The Vix volatility index, also known as Wall Street’s “fear gauge,” rose sharply to 24 points, before easing to around 22, still above its long-term average.

Mr. Trump’s comments on tariffs extended the stock market’s declines from earlier in the day, when a February reading for a key manufacturing index came in weaker than investors had expected, a sign of slower growth in the sector.

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President Emmanuel Macron of France, like many foreign leaders, has tried to strike a delicate balance of cajoling and resistance in dealing with Trump. But Bayrou, who as France’s prime minister plays little role in its foreign policy, was much more blunt and grim. He told lawmakers that “what we have brutally discovered over the past few weeks” was that the international rule of law was broken.

But Bayrou also insisted that “Europeans are stronger than we believe” as he called for increased defense spending around the continent.

“On this point, France is for once in agreement with Mr. Trump,” he said. “If we are strong, we can’t ask others to defend us over the long term.”

Hegseth says Fort Moore will be renamed to Fort Benning.

The base’s name was changed in 2023 as part of a wider bipartisan effort to eliminate military honors bestowed on Confederate officers who rebelled against the Union during the Civil War. Mr. Hegseth views those changes as part of a “woke” culture and wants to return the bases back to their old names.

Current law does not let him do that — the military is no longer allowed to name bases after Confederate generals — so Mr. Hegseth has found other military troops with the same last names.

Last month, he announced that Fort Liberty in North Carolina would return to the name Fort Bragg, but in honor of an enlisted Army soldier named Roland L. Bragg, who fought in World War II, and not the Confederate general Braxton Bragg.

On Monday, it was Fort Moore’s turn.

“I direct the U.S. Army to change the name of Fort Moore, Georgia, to Fort Benning, Georgia, in honor of Corporal (CPL) Fred G. Benning, who served with extraordinary heroism during World War I with the United States Army, and in recognition of the installation’s storied history of service to the United States of America,” Mr. Hegseth said in a statement.

Corporal Benning, he said, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his “extraordinary heroism” on the battlefield in France in 1918, for leading his company through heavy fire to its assigned objective in support of the Meuse-Argonne offensive.

“Corp. Benning was the living embodiment of the Infantryman’s Creed, as he never failed his country’s trust and fought to the objective to triumph for his unit and his country,” Mr. Hegseth said.

But while Fort Bragg had been renamed for an ideal — liberty — Fort Moore had honored Lt. Gen. Hal Moore of the Army, a Vietnam War hero, and his wife, Julie Compton Moore.

Ms. Moore had held the family together through two dozen moves and prompted the Army to set up survivor support networks. Because of her work, the Defense Department started requiring that teams consisting of uniformed officers notify families of military deaths, a system that is still in use today.

General Moore was the lieutenant colonel in command of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, at the battle of Ia Drang in 1965, during the Vietnam War. He has a Distinguished Service Cross, a Purple Heart (which he never wore because he said his wound was too minor) and four Bronze Stars, including two with V devices, for acts of valor in combat.

He recounted the battle of Ia Drang in the 1992 best seller “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” which was made into the movie “We Were Soldiers” in 2002, starring Mel Gibson as General Moore.

At the ceremony marking the change in 2023, Maj. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, Fort Moore’s commander, said the couple embodied “the very best of our military and the very best of our nation.”

“By honoring them, Fort Moore recognizes the sacrifices of all veterans, especially highlighting those from Vietnam,” he added. “It also reinforces the important role Army spouses and families play in the success of our military.”

The Moores are buried at the Army base.

After Mr. Hegseth hinted on his first day at the Pentagon that he wanted to change the name of Fort Moore back to Fort Benning, the couple’s son, Dave Moore, told the Stars and Stripes newspaper that his parents “still represent the values and culture and competencies” that Mr. Hegseth “is saying he wants in our force.”

He added, “I think it’s a win for the Department of Defense if they do nothing.”

In his statement, Mr. Hegseth said the Army should look for ways to honor the Moores.

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Dozens of technology specialists across the federal government are fired.

“This decision was made with explicit direction from the top levels of leadership within both the administration and G.S.A.,” Mr. Shedd said in the email, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. He added that while no other Technology Transformation Services programs had been affected, “we anticipate more change in the future.”

In termination letters dated Friday, employees were informed that their roles would be eliminated in keeping with President Trump’s orders to downsize the government. Workers have been placed on administrative leave until they are officially released at the end of April, according to copies of letters seen by The New York Times.

A spokeswoman for the G.S.A. said in a statement that the administration would continue to embrace technology that would enhance and modernize the government’s digital infrastructure and I.T. capabilities, in a statement confirming that employees of 18F had been informed they would be laid off.

Among the marquee websites that 18F employees helped build or worked to revamp are the Internal Revenue Service’s free tax filing service known as Direct File and the National Weather Service’s page, weather.gov.

But since Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office, 18F has also been targeted by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire whom Mr. Trump tasked with cutting back the government. Mr. Musk wrote last month in a post on his social media platform, X, that “that group has been deleted.”

The Obama administration created 18F and the U.S. Digital Service in 2014 to help agencies develop and integrate digital software, after its faulty rollout of healthcare.gov, which crashed on the first day consumers were eligible to purchase health care plans through insurance exchanges. The new offices were envisioned as in-house technology consulting firms, with the goal of managing costs and improving efficiency of the government’s digital offerings.

The U.S. Digital Service was one of the earliest corners of the government to get a Musk makeover, when Mr. Trump renamed it the U.S. DOGE Service — the operation that Mr. Musk has used to slash contracts and pressure government employees to resign.

Within hours of receiving Mr. Shedd’s notice on Saturday, employees of 18F created a website to air their grievances against the Trump administration and accuse higher-ups of undermining an operation they had praised just weeks before.

The 18F employees cited an internal meeting in early February in which Mr. Shedd, they said, had “acknowledged that the group is the ‘gold standard’ of civic technologists,” and “repeatedly emphasized the importance of the work, and the value of the talent that the teams bring to government.”

Their work had been halted so abruptly, the suspended employees continued, that they were unable to assist in an orderly transition or even learn where to return their equipment. Before their suspensions, the website continued, 18F staff were working to help the I.R.S. support free filing software, to improve access to weather data at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and streamline the process of procuring a passport.