Trump says he will announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs Monday, and more import duties are coming

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.

“Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff,” he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One as he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. When asked about aluminum, he responded, “aluminum, too” will be subject to the trade penalties.

Shares of U.S. steel companies rose sharply in futures trading before the opening bell Monday. Cleveland-Cliffs, which wants to buy Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel, jumped 8%. U.S. Steel rose 5%. Nucor rose almost 8%, and Steel Dynamics rose more than 6%.

Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce “reciprocal tariffs” — “probably Tuesday or Wednesday” — meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases in which another country has levied duties on U.S. goods.

“If they are charging us 130% and we’re charging them nothing, it’s not going to stay that way,” he told reporters.

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Unspent aid worth billions lacks oversight as Trump dismantles USAID, watchdog warns

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid following the Trump administration’s foreign funding freeze and idling of staffers, a government watchdog warned Monday.

The administration’s fast-moving dismantling of the agency has left oversight of the aid “largely nonoperational,” USAID’s inspector general’s office said. That includes a greatly reduced ability to ensure that no assistance falls into the hands of violent extremist groups or goes astray in unstable regions or conflict zones, the watchdog said.

The Trump administration’s actions have “significantly impacted USAID’s capacity to disburse and safeguard its humanitarian assistance programming,” it said, also citing the risk of hundreds of millions of dollars in commodities rotting after staff was barred from delivering it.

The inspector general, however, also noted that it has “longstanding concerns about existing USAID oversight mechanisms.”

Meanwhile, the administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk continued their unraveling of the aid agency. The General Services Administration, which manages government buildings, told The Associated Press that it had stripped USAID from the lease on its Washington headquarters.

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With firings and lax enforcement, Trump moving to dismantle government’s public integrity guardrails

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the first three weeks of his administration, President Donald Trump has moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails that he frequently tested during his first term but now seems intent on removing entirely.

In a span of hours on Monday, word came that he had forced out leaders of offices responsible for government ethics and whistleblower complaints. And in a boon to corporations, he ordered a pause to enforcement of a decades-old law that prohibits American companies from bribing foreign governments to win business. All of that came on top of the earlier late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general who are tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse at government agencies.

It’s all being done with a stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play. Now, he seems determined to break those constraints once and for all in a historically unprecedented flex of executive power.

“It’s the most corrupt start that we’ve ever seen in the history of the American presidency,” said Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who was a legal adviser to Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment.

“The end goal is to avoid accountability this time,” said Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer. “Not just being protected by his party and counting on the public to move on when scandals or problems emerge, but this time by actually removing many of the key figures whose job it is to oversee” his administration.

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Trump says ceasefire deal should be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all hostages by Saturday

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Monday that a precarious ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas should be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza by midday on Saturday — though he also said that such a decision would be up to Israel.

Trump was responding to Hamas saying it will delay the further release of hostages in the Gaza Strip after accusing Israel of violating the three-week-old ceasefire. The U.S. president said that after the freeing of three visibly emaciated hostages on Saturday it was time for Israel to demand the release of all hostages by noon on Saturday, or restart the war.

“If they’re not here, all hell is going to break out,” Trump said. He added of the ceasefire, “Cancel it, and all bets are off.”

Trump said the final decision would be up to Israel, saying, “I’m speaking for myself. Israel can override it.” But asked if the U.S. would join in a response to Hamas if hostages weren’t freed, Trump added, “Hamas will find out what I mean.”

Those comments came after Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel that Palestinians in Gaza would not have a right to return under his plan for U.S. “ownership” of the war-torn territory — contradicting other officials in his administration who have sought to argue Trump was only calling for the temporary relocation of its population.

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DOGE’s access to Treasury data risks US financial standing and raises security worries, experts warn

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Government Efficiency’s embed into the federal government has raised a host of concerns, transforming a debate over how to cut government waste into a confrontation over privacy rights and the nation’s financial standing in the world.

DOGE, spearheaded by billionaire Donald Trump donor Elon Musk, has rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies and taken drastic actions to cut spending. This includes trying to get rid of thousands of federal workers, shuttering the U.S. Agency for International Development and accessing the Treasury Department’s enormous payment systems.

Advocacy groups and labor unions have filed lawsuits in an attempt to save agencies and federal worker jobs, and five former treasury secretaries are sounding the alarm on the risks associated with Musk’s DOGE accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems and potentially stopping congressionally authorized payments.

“Any hint of the selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments will be a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default. And our credibility, once lost, will prove difficult to regain,” said former treasury secretaries Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen in an op-ed in The New York Times on Monday.

They warn about the risks of “arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy.”

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Volunteers are now tracking what’s already been lost in the USAID freeze

When U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department told their contractors to pause all work, Sadie Healy expected the impact to be “horrendous.”

But Healy, who runs a small global health consulting firm, Molloy Consultants, realized no one was documenting how bad the freeze on U.S. foreign aid would be. USAID wouldn’t be cataloging the impacts as President Donald Trump’s administration fired senior staff, shuttered its headquarters and then told its employees their jobs would end. The nonprofits and aid companies who worked with USAID were fighting to survive.

So Healy decided she would do it.

“I am an action person. The depression and the sadness that we knew this was going to cause was something I couldn’t deal with,” Healy said in an interview with The Associated Press. “So we called a Zoom meeting.”

Healy is one of a growing number of people and organizations in the international development ecosystem stepping forward to track the impact of the freeze on U.S. foreign aid. Many are nonprofits who already support grassroots groups around the world, while others are professionals now volunteering their time, connections and skills.

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Elon Musk-led group proposes buying OpenAI for $97.4 billion. OpenAI CEO says ‘no thank you’

A group of investors led by Elon Musk is offering about $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit behind OpenAI, escalating a dispute with the artificial intelligence company that Musk helped found a decade ago.

Musk and his own AI startup, xAI, and a consortium of investment firms want to take control of the ChatGPT maker and revert it to its original charitable mission as a nonprofit research lab, according to Musk’s attorney Marc Toberoff.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly rejected the unsolicited bid on Musk’s social platform X, saying, “no thank you but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.”

Musk bought Twitter, now called X, for $44 billion in 2022.

Musk and Altman, who together helped start OpenAI in 2015 and later competed over who should lead it, have been in a long-running feud over the startup’s direction since Musk resigned from its board in 2018.

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Top Justice Department official orders prosecutors to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, arguing in a remarkable departure from long-standing norms that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In a two-page memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told prosecutors in New York that they were “directed to dismiss” the bribery charges against Adams immediately.

Bove said the order was not based on the strength of evidence in the case, but rather because it had been brought too close to Adams reelection campaign and was distracting from the mayor’s efforts to assist in the Trump administration’s law-and-order priorities.

“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime,” Bove wrote.

The memo also ordered prosecutors in New York not to take “additional investigative steps” against the Democrat until after November’s mayoral election, though it left open the possibility that charges could be refiled after that following a review.

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New strain of bird flu is detected in a Nevada dairy worker, CDC says

NEW YORK (AP) — A dairy worker in Nevada was infected with a new type of bird flu that’s different from the version that has been spreading in U.S. herds since last year, federal health officials said Monday.

The illness was considered mild. The person’s main symptom was eye redness and irritation, similar to most bird flu cases associated with dairy cows. The person wasn’t hospitalized and has recovered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The newer strain had been seen before in more than a dozen people exposed to poultry, but this is the first time an infection was traced to a cow. The Nevada dairy worker was exposed at a farm in Churchill County, in the west central part of the state, state health officials said.

CDC officials said there is no evidence the virus has spread from this person to any other people. The agency continues to say the virus poses a low risk to the general public.

The bird flu currently spreading through animals, and some people, is known to scientists as Type A H5N1 influenza. But there are different strains.

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Little to no relief from high borrowing costs expected as Fed Chair Powell heads to the Hill

WASHINGTON (AP) — The odds of further interest rate cuts this year by the Federal Reserve dwindled last week as unemployment fell and more officials say they want to see how new policies from the White House affect the economy.

While Fed officials penciled in two rate cuts this year at their December meeting, economists and Wall Street investors are increasingly skeptical, with some predicting no reductions at all this year. On Friday, economists at Morgan Stanley said they now expect just one rate cut in 2025, and investors also expect just one — in July — according to pricing in futures markets.

Fewer cuts could translate into a longer period of elevated mortgage rates and high costs to borrow money for everything from autos to credit cards. Still, mortgage rates are closely tied to the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which can move independently of the Fed’s actions.

The shifting expectations come as Chair Jerome Powell heads to Capitol Hill for two days of testimony this week, beginning Tuesday, before House and Senate committees that oversee the central bank and the financial industry. Fed chairs are required by law to appear before Congress twice a year.

Members of Congress may urge that he cut rates more quickly. He will also likely be grilled about issues that are taking a higher profile under the Trump administration, such as crypto regulation, banking regulation, and allegations of “de-banking.”