Trump to sign order barring student loan forgiveness for public servants engaged in ‘improper activities’ – live

The 2026 World Cup will be hosted jointly by the United State along with Mexico and Canada – the two neighbors with whom Donald Trump just started a trade war.

Canada and Mexico are very unhappy with Trump for the tariffs he imposed this week (though he later exempted many products). The US president was asked about those feelings in the Oval Office, where he signed an executive order establishing a task force to coordinate the World Cup alongside Fifa president Gianni Infantino.

Donald Trump just invited reporters back in to the Oval Office to talk about his preparations for next year’s World Cup. But the press, of course, had other things they wanted to know about, specifically the New York Times’s reporting that Elon Musk and Marco Rubio had argued in front of him yesterday.

“No clash, I was there. You’re just a troublemaker and you’re not supposed to be asking that question, because we’re talking about the World Cup,” Trump told a reporter who inquired about the reported spat. “But Elon gets along great with Marco and they’re both doing a fantastic job. But there is no clash.”

The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, has warned that Donald Trump’s administration has created so much uncertainty among consumers and businesses that it could affect the economy:

The US economy faces a potential slowdown in consumer spending amid “heightened uncertainty about the economic outlook” among businesses, the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, said on Friday.

The central bank chief said the Fed will be in no rush to cut interest rates while it waits for more clarity on how the policies of the new Trump administration affect the economy.

“The new administration is in the process of implementing significant policy changes in four distinct areas: trade, immigration, fiscal policy and regulation,” Powell said in remarks prepared for a University of Chicago Booth School of Business economic forum in New York City. “Uncertainty around the changes and their likely effects remains high.

“We are focused on separating the signal from the noise as the outlook evolves. We do not need to be in a hurry and are well-positioned to wait for greater clarity.”

Powell spoke at a volatile time, with stock markets and bond yields both declining in the wake of Donald Trump’s whiplash announcements of steep import tariffs on major trading partners Mexico and Canada, followed by delays in implementing them. Trump has also doubled tariffs on imports from China.

Though Powell said the economy “continues to be in a good place”, he added: “It remains to be seen how these developments might affect future spending and investment.”

Yesterday, reports emerged that Donald Trump had told cabinet secretaries that they were in charge of hiring and firing at their agencies, and that Elon Musk, whose so-called “department of government efficiency” has ordered disruptive staff cuts, would play an advisory role.

It was a concrete sign of the president looking to rein in Musk in his unorthodox position, and the New York Times reports that the meeting was quite tense. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and Musk reportedly went at it for a while in front of Trump:

Mr Rubio had been privately furious with Mr Musk for weeks, ever since his team effectively shuttered an entire agency that was supposedly under Mr Rubio’s control: the United States Agency for International Development. But, in the extraordinary cabinet meeting in front of President Trump and around 20 others – details of which have not been reported before – Mr Rubio got his grievances off his chest.

Mr Musk was not being truthful, Mr Rubio said. What about the more than 1,500 State Department officials who took early retirement in buyouts? Didn’t they count as layoffs? He asked, sarcastically, whether Mr Musk wanted him to rehire all those people just so he could make a show of firing them again. Then he laid out his detailed plans for reorganizing the State Department.

The atmosphere also grew heated again when Musk turned to the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, whose department is dealing with the aftermath of the first major plane crash in 15 years:

Just moments before the blowup with Mr Rubio, Mr Musk and the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, went back and forth about the state of the Federal Aviation Administration’s equipment for tracking airplanes and what kind of fix was needed. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, jumped in to support Mr Musk.

Mr Duffy said the young staff of Mr Musk’s team was trying to lay off air traffic controllers. What am I supposed to do? Mr Duffy said. I have multiple plane crashes to deal with now, and your people want me to fire air traffic controllers?

Here’s more on Musk’s newly fractious relationship with Trump’s cabinet, as well as Republican senators:

Donald Trump plans to today sign an executive order barring government and non-profit employees from a student loan forgiveness program if they engage in “improper activities”.

The order affects the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, under which employees of those organizations can have their federal student debt forgiven if they meet certain criteria. White House staff secretary Will Scharf said that the order will target employees of non-governmental organizations “that engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper activities, supporting, for example, illegal immigration or foreign terrorist organizations or otherwise law-breaking activities”.

The order will direct the treasury and education departments to ensure that people involved in those activities are not eligible for the forgiveness.

The news of Columbia University’s federal grants and contract cancellations comes just two days after a fake bomb threat resulted in the evacuations of students protesting in support of Palestinians by NYPD at the university’s women’s college, Barnard.

Many students continue to fight back against what they view as the university’s crackdown on free speech and protest.

A Columbia University spokesperson wrote in a statement to school’s newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, that it is “reviewing the announcement from the federal agencies and pledge to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding”.

“We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously and understand how serious this announcement is and are committed to combatting antisemitism and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff,” the spokesperson wrote.

Columbia University just had $400m worth of federal grants and contracts terminated, the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and the US General Services Administration announced.

A press release from the Department of Education said the contracts were cancelled “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.

The university, which has more than $5bn in federal grant commitments, has been a target of the Trump administration as it was the birthplace of the Gaza encampment protests that swept the country last year, in which students pitched tents and camped out on their colleges’ lawns in protest of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Republican lawmakers viewed the protests as antisemitic, despite the fact many protesters vehemently denied the accusations or are even Jewish themselves.

This is the first of of many cancellations and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued a chilling warning to other colleges who allow for such protests: “Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus.

“Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening.

The US has a long record of delay tactics and obstructionism, and had so far pledged only $17.5m (£13.5m) to the loss and damage fund, which became operational on 1 January this year. Now the US, the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, will no longer participate in the initiative.

“On behalf of the United States Department of the Treasury, I write to inform you that the United States is withdrawing from the board for the fund for responding to loss and damage, effective immediately,” said Rebecca Lawlor, the deputy director at the US Office of Climate and Environment, in a letter to the fund.

The decision to abandon the loss and damage fund was condemned by climate advocates from the global north and south.

Here’s more on this story:

Donald Trump just held court in the Oval Office, where he again expressed sympathy for Russia, saying he found it “easier” to negotiate with them on achieving a ceasefire in Ukraine. He also cheered the latest employment numbers as proving the wisdom of his economic policies, and said he may soon target Canada with more tariffs to settle long-running disputes over their dairy and lumber industries. The president sounded a bit different earlier in the day, when he threatened Russia with sanctions and tariffs if it did not sign on to a ceasefire. Trump is scheduled to sign executive orders at 2.30pm, before heading to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Democrats are no fan of Trump’s tariffs, but one congressman told his party not to ignore their appeal to voters in deindustrialized areas of the country.

• The latest attempt by the “department of government efficiency” to take over a federal agency was stopped by a judge, for now.

• Justin Trudeau’s recent call with Trump ended with tense and profane words, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Donald Trump kept up his streak of sounding partial to the US’s historic enemy Russia, by acknowledging that he viewed them as an “easier” negotiating partner in finding a ceasefire in Ukraine.

“I find that in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with Russia, which is surprising, because they have all the cards, and they’re bombing the hell out of them right now,” Trump said.

Asked whether he believes Vladimir Putin wants peace, Trump said:

I believe him. I think we’re doing very well with Russia, and right now they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine. I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. They don’t have the cards.

The United States has had a long-running trade dispute with Canada over its dairy and lumber exports, and Donald Trump just said he would be willing to explicitly sanction imports of those products from the US’s northern neighbor.

“Canada has been ripping us off for years on tariffs for lumber and for dairy products,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “That’s not going to happen anymore … they’ll be met with the exact same tariff unless they drop it, and that’s what reciprocal [means]. And we may do it as early as today, or we’ll wait till Monday or Tuesday, but that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to charge the same thing.”

Donald Trump is speaking in the Oval Office now, where he’s singing his praises of the February employment data the labor department released this morning, noting it showed more hiring in the private sector.

“Under the final two years of Biden, one in every four jobs created in America was a government job. That’s a tremendous percentage,” the president said. “But under the first full month of President Trump, which we haven’t even gotten started yet, an incredible 93% of all job gains were in the private sector.”

The comments come as Trump has vowed to dramatically downsize government, including with mass firings of federal employees. The February data from the labor department showed a 10,000 position decrease in employment in the federal government. Here’s more on the report: