Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of present US domestic news briefs.

US to use AI to revoke visas of students it sees as Hamas advocates, Axios reports

The U.S. State Department will utilize expert system to revoke visas of foreign students who it views as advocates of Palestinian Hamas militants, Axios reported on Thursday, mentioning senior State Department officials. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to fight antisemitism and has pledged to deport non-citizen university student and others who participated in pro-Palestinian protests that have been ongoing for months amid Israel’s military assault on Gaza after Hamas’ October 2023 attack.

CIA fires an undefined variety of brand-new officers

The Central Intelligence Agency fired a slew of recent hires this week, 3 individuals acquainted with the matter said, cuts that existing and former U.S. intelligence officers warned would risk damaging U.S. national security. The firings under U.S. President Donald Trump’s new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, come as Trump administers over massive federal workforce decreases overseen by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Veterans, farm groups slam Trump cuts at Democrat-run Arizona town hall

Arizona farm groups and veterans united by Democratic chief law officers blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s federal cuts, saying the president was overlooking judges who blocked his executive orders and harming previous service members. They spoke at an in some cases raucous town hall on Wednesday night organized by the country’s 23 Democratic attorneys basic, who have submitted claims to ask judges to obstruct a string of Trump executive orders, including his suspension of trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and monetary assistance.

‘We remain in a dark area,’ US judge states on rising hazards

Threats versus U.S. judges are increasing and lawyers ought to do more to press back against heated rhetoric, 4 federal judges stated in a panel discussion on Thursday. Speaking at an American Bar Association meeting on clerical criminal offense in Miami, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware of Las Vegas federal court said risks against the judiciary had increased “greatly.”

Trump’s FDA candidate tepidly backs role for vaccine consultants in secured Senate appearance

Martin Makary, President Donald Trump’s candidate to run the U.S. FDA, told lawmakers on Thursday he would assemble a committee of vaccine consultants however said he would reassess which clinical problems need their input. It was one of a number of issues on which Makary, a Johns Hopkins doctor, kept his cards near his chest while dealing with the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for two hours.

Trump tells cabinet secretaries they, not Musk, are in charge of staff cuts

U.S. President Donald Trump informed his cabinet members on Thursday that they, not Elon Musk, have the last say on staffing and policy at their companies, according to a source knowledgeable about the matter. The billionaire Tesla CEO and his Department of Government Efficiency will play an advisory role only, Trump stated, according to the source. Musk was in the room and told the cabinet he was excellent with Trump’s plan, the source stated.

Push for permanent US daytime conserving time frozen as Trump says Americans are divided

A three-year congressional effort to make daytime saving time irreversible in the United States appears to have actually halted, with President Donald Trump saying on Thursday that Americans are uniformly divided over the problem. Daylight saving time – putting the clocks forward one hour throughout the summertime half of the year to maximize the longer evenings – has actually been in place in nearly all of the United States given that the 1960s, however supporters have pushed to make it year-round.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs deals with new indictment, is implicated of ‘forced labor’

U.S. district attorneys on Thursday unveiled a new indictment versus Sean “Diddy” Combs, implicating the hip-hop mogul of forcing staff members to work long hours and threatening to punish those who did not assist in his two-decade sex trafficking scheme. Combs, 55, still faces a scheduled May 5 trial in Manhattan on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has actually pleaded innocent.

US federal employees countered at Trump mass firings with class action complaints

U.S. government staff members who have been fired in the Trump administration’s purge of recently hired employees are responding with class action-style complaints declaring that the mass firings are unlawful and 10s of thousands of need to get their tasks back. Lawyers at two companies said on Thursday that they had submitted 6 appeals with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board given that last week and, along with other law practice, strategy to produce 15 more on an agency-by-agency basis on behalf of large groups of workers who were fired in recent weeks.

Trump administration need to make some foreign aid payments by Monday, judge guidelines

The Trump administration need to make some payments to foreign aid specialists and grant recipients by 6 p.m. (1100 GMT) on Monday, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed the administration’s demand to avoid a due date for the payments. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali came at the end of a hearing in a lawsuit by contractors and non-profit grant receivers challenging President Donald Trump’s extensive freeze of U.S. foreign help, a day after the groups got a boost from the Supreme Court. It orders the federal government to pay billings submitted by the complainants in the case before February 13.