Trump administration live updates: Donald Trump expected to sign order shutting down Department of Education

The Defense Department has taken down or plans to delete thousands of websites to comply with the president’s order eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work from the federal government, which means removing pages dedicated to topics like remembering the Holocaust and the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Here’s Josh Marcus to explain.

A federal judge has expressed alarm at allegations that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) provoked a dramatic standoff this week with the U.S. Institute of Peace, culminating in what attorneys for the agency called a hostile “takeover” fueled by threats and harassment.

Federal prosecutors have threatened institute officials with criminal prosecution, DOGE members warned that a private security contractor would lose government contracts, and the institute’s president was forcibly removed by several law enforcement agencies – events that attorneys with the Department of Justice have not disputed.

In a hearing in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, District Judge Beryl Howell asked Justice Department attorneys whether Trump’s administration could enforce his executive order seeking to shutter the agency “without using the force of guns and threats by DOGE against American citizens.”

“I mean, this conduct of using law enforcement, threatening criminal investigations, using arms of law enforcement… probably terrorizing employees and staff at the institute, when there are so many other lawful ways to accomplish the goals… why?” she said.

“Just because DOGE is in a rush?”

The institute is not a federal agency but an independent nonprofit established by Congress under Ronald Reagan.

Its headquarters in Washington, D.C., is not government property, and its personnel are not federal employees.

The institute employs roughly 600 people in the United States and overseas with a congressional mandate to help resolve international conflicts.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and other Trump administration lawyers told the federal judge who ordered a stop to the deportations of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador to be more “respectful” in an angry court filing on Wednesday.

“The court has no basis to intrude into the conduct of foreign affairs of the government, and a more deliberative and respectful approach is warranted,” the filing scolds.

Judge James Boasberg’s actions “represent grave usurpations of the president’s power,” it adds.

The language was the latest assault by the Trump administration on the power of the courts, which some have labelled a constitutional crisis as the president battles to become the supreme arbiter of everything in the nation.

The Trump administration has been accused by another judge of failing to comply with his court order – in this case to reinstate federal employees fired during Elon Musk’s DOGE purges.

Six federal agencies – the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior, and Treasury – were ordered by Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for Northern California to rehire all fired probationary employees.

But the Trump administration had responded by putting the fired workers on paid administrative leave.

Here’s the latest from Graig Graziosi.

The Trump administration is reportedly attempting to deport an Indian post-doctoral fellow from Georgetown University, using the same obscure section of immigration law cited in the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia grad and pro-Palestine protest leader.

The provision the government allegedly cites allows the Secretary of State to determine non-citizens are eligible for fast-track deportations if they threaten U.S. foreign policy interests.

Masked Department of Homeland Security agents arrived outside the Rosslyn, Virginia, home of Badar Khan Suri on Monday and told him his student visa had been revoked.

In a still-sealed habeas corpus petition filed on Tuesday, Suri’s lawyer said the fellow appeared to be in the process of being punished for the Palestinian heritage and political views of his wife Mapheze Saleh, a U.S. citizen.

The same question was put to Howard Lutnick by Jesse Watters on the same network a little more bluntly.

Lutnick later pivoted to promoting Tesla’s for Elon Musk, which might be considered somewhat unethical, I would venture to suggest.

The second instalment of the Fox anchor’s White House interview with the president aired last night, with Trump again refusing to rule out an economic downturn while promising sunshine after the storm for (checks notes, squints, lowers glasses) this “fat dumb foolish country.”

He was clearly more interested in showing off his latest makeover of the Oval Office, however.

Here’s more on old Goldmember’s interior decoration mania.

The president has long touted the closure of the federal agency responsible for America’s schooling in favor of leaving it up to the states and today looks finally like being the day.

The policy, which was also discussed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto that Trump claimed to have nothing to do with, is expected to be realised with the flourish of a fat Sharpie at a White House event this afternoon, with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the former wrestling boss, looking on.

“The dream is we’re going to move the Department of Education, we’re going to move education into the states, so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education,” the president said last week.

“We think when you move it back to Iowa and Indiana and all of the states that run so well… 30, maybe almost 40, those will be as good as Denmark, those will be as good as Norway.”

According to USA Today, which first reported the development, McMahon will be instructed to undertake “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.”