Trump soaks up chants of four more years at Black History Month event: LIVE

Donald Trump is endorsing an idea from Elon Musk and his supporters to cut Americans a check for “savings” identified by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

Speaking at a Saudi-backed investment conference in Miami on Wednesday, the president endorsed an idea to give 20 percent of those alleged savings back to American taxpayers, with another 20 percent to “pay down debt,” Trump said. It is unclear where that remaining 60 percent would go.

It was obvious to Christine Smith Olsey that her son was not doing well at school, despite educators telling her to leave it to the experts. The second-grade student stumbled over words, and other kids teased him so much he started to call himself “an idiot.”

Though her son had been receiving speech and occupational therapy, Smith Olsey said his Denver charter school resisted her requests for additional academic support. She filed a complaint with the state and then, in September, the Education Department‘s Office for Civil Rights.

In January, her son’s case came to a halt.

The savings claimed by tech billionaire Elon Musk eked out by his Department of Government Efficiency are worth negligible “pennies,” a Wall Street Journal reporter mocked in a CNN interview Thursday.

The Journal‘s senior political correspondent Molly Ball was reacting to Musk and Trump’s consideration of some kind of DOGE “dividends” purported to be worth thousands of dollars to Americans with the money they’re claiming to have snatched back shutting down foreign aid and via the salaries of fired thousands of federal workers.

But Musk’s savings are a minute fraction of not only the federal budget but its burgeoning debt and the massive $4.5 trillion tax cut being cooked up by Donald Trump and the Republicans,

South Korean officials have requested an exemption from U.S. reciprocal, steel and aluminium tariffs during their visit this week to Washington, the industry ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Deputy Minister Park Jong-won, who led the first major South Korean government delegation to visit Washington since U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs, argued that almost all tariffs between the two countries have already been eliminated under their free trade agreement.

As a major global exporter and top trading partner with the United States, South Korea has viewed Trump’s measures with increasing concern.

The Department of Justice has removed a database tracking misconduct by federal law enforcement. President Donald Trump proposed the list during his first term, and former President Joe Biden formally created it.

The Justice Department website says the database is no longer active and was being decommissioned after Trump revoked Biden’s executive order creating it.

According to a report released last year, as of September 2024, the database contained 4,790 records of federal officer misconduct between 2018 and 2023.

Trump himself had proposed creating a database on “instances of excessive use of force related to law enforcement matters” in June 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died when a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

With reporting by Reuters

Any meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin “will largely depend on whether we can make any progress on ending the war in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday.

Rubio said he discussed such a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday when he met with him in Saudi Arabia.

He told Lavrov and Russian officials: “There isn’t going to be a meeting until we know what the meeting is going to be about.”

“You don’t generally have these meetings until you know some outcome or some progress has been made,” Rubio told journalist Catherine Herridge in an interview broadcast on X.

“So I think when that meeting happens will largely depend on whether we can make any progress on ending the war in Ukraine, and if we can, and that meeting is what seals the deal, I think everybody should celebrate that President Trump is a peacemaker,” he said.

In another excerpt of the interview about negotiations with Russia and Ukraine, Rubio said: “We talked to the Ukrainians throughout this process, and we explained to them very clearly what our intentions were…”

“The President of the United States spoke to Zelensky right after he hung up with (President) Putin. I was in the office for both phone calls,” he continued.

“To say that we have not consulted with them is not accurate, it’s not true. It’s also not true that we haven’t consulted with our allies in Europe.”

Yes, it’s only been a month…

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pledged on Thursday that Ukraine was ready to work quickly to produce a strong agreement on investments and security with the U.S., saying a meeting with envoy Keith Kellogg “restores hope” for success.

“General Kellogg, a meeting which restores hope. We need strong agreements that will really work. I gave instructions to work fast and in a very, very even-handed fashion,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.

“The details of the agreement are important. The better the details are drafted, the better the result.”

The meeting with Kellogg took place a day after Zelensky and President Donald Trump exchanged barbs as U.S.-Russian talks got underway on ending the three-year war on Kyiv by Moscow. Ukraine was not invited to the talks.

After the meeting with Kellogg, Zelensky said on X that Ukraine had to “ensure that peace is strong and lasting – so that Russia can never return with war.”

“Ukraine is ready for a strong, effective investment and security agreement with the President of the United States. We have proposed the fastest and most constructive way to achieve results. Our team is ready to work 24/7.”

The talks with Kellogg followed Ukraine’s rejection of an initial U.S. proposal to develop rare earths in the country.

In his comments on X, Zelensky also said his discussion with Kellogg focused on the battlefield situation, the security guarantees that Ukraine is seeking, and the return of prisoners of war.

“It’s important for us — and for the entire free world — that American strength is felt,” he wrote.

Zelensky also spoke with the leaders of Denmark, South Africa, Finland, and Norway, as well as French President Emanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

With reporting by Reuters

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has fired three of the seven people in the auto safety agency unit that oversees autonomous cars, which Elon Musk has said represent Tesla’s future.

The Washington Post reports that the cuts to the specialized unit come as part of a 10 percent reduction at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, citing three people who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The agency covers all aspects of vehicular safety. Per the Post:

DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach also eliminated three out of roughly seven people in a new office charged with overseeing the safety of autonomous vehicles, one person familiar with the cuts said. Fired workers said they do not believe they were targeted specifically because they are examining driverless cars, which remain a new and controversial technology. But one of them said the upshot is the same, with less scrutiny of robotic vehicles.

China came out in support of President Donald Trump’s bid to strike a deal with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, at a G20 meeting in South Africa on Thursday, as U.S. allies rallied around Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“China supports all efforts conducive to peace (in Ukraine), including the recent consensus reached between the United States and Russia,” Wang Yi told other G20 foreign ministers gathered in Johannesburg, according to a statement from his ministry.

“China is willing to continue playing a constructive role in the political resolution of the crisis,” he added.

Wang did not reiterate the point he made at the Munich Security Conference last Friday that all stakeholders in the Russia-Ukraine conflict should participate in any peace talks.

With reporting from Reuters