Reuters United States Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

US to utilize AI to revoke visas of students it views as Hamas fans, Axios reports

The U.S. State Department will utilize synthetic intelligence to withdraw visas of foreign students who it perceives as fans of Palestinian Hamas militants, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior State Department authorities. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism and has promised to deport non-citizen university student and others who took part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been ongoing for months in the middle of Israel’s military attack on Gaza after Hamas’ October 2023 attack.

CIA fires an unspecified number of new officers

The Central Intelligence Agency fired a slew of recent hires today, three people acquainted with the matter stated, cuts that existing and previous U.S. intelligence officers alerted would risk harmful U.S. national security. The firings under U.S. President Donald Trump’s new CIA director, John Ratcliffe, come as Trump administers over huge federal labor force reductions supervised by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

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

Arizona farm groups and veterans combined by Democratic attorney generals of the United States blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s federal cuts, saying the president was ignoring judges who obstructed his executive orders and harming previous service members. They spoke at a sometimes raucous town hall on Wednesday night organized by the nation’s 23 Democratic attorney generals of the United States, who have filed claims to ask judges to block a string of Trump executive orders, including his suspension of trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and monetary support.

‘We’re in a dark space,’ US judge says on increasing risks

Threats versus U.S. judges are increasing and lawyers should do more to press back versus heated rhetoric, four federal judges said in a panel discussion on Thursday. Speaking at an American Bar Association conference on clerical criminal activity in Miami, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware of Las Vegas federal court said risks against the judiciary had gone up “tremendously.”

Trump’s FDA candidate tepidly backs function for vaccine advisers in guarded Senate appearance

Martin Makary, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. FDA, told legislators on Thursday he would assemble a committee of vaccine consultants but said he would reassess which scientific concerns need their input. It was one of a number of concerns on which Makary, a Johns Hopkins doctor, kept his cards near to his chest while dealing with the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for 2 hours.

Trump informs cabinet secretaries they, not Musk, supervise of staff cuts

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

Push for irreversible US daylight conserving time frozen as Trump says Americans are divided

A three-year congressional effort to make daylight conserving time long-term in the United States appears to have stopped, with President Donald Trump stating on Thursday that Americans are evenly divided over the issue. Daylight saving time – putting the clocks forward one hour during the summertime half of the year to maximize the longer nights – has been in in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s, however advocates have pressed to make it year-round.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs deals with brand-new indictment, is accused of ‘required labor’

U.S. district attorneys on Thursday unveiled a new indictment against Sean “Diddy” Combs, implicating the hip-hop magnate of forcing employees to work long hours and threatening to penalize those who did not help in his two-decade sex trafficking scheme. Combs, 55, still deals with a scheduled May 5 trial in Manhattan on federal charges of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to take part in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty.

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

U.S. civil servant who have been fired in the Trump administration’s purge of just recently employed workers are responding with class action-style complaints declaring that the mass firings are prohibited and tens of countless individuals ought to get their tasks back. Lawyers at two firms stated on Thursday that they had filed 6 appeals with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board given that recently and, in addition to other law practice, strategy to produce 15 more on an agency-by-agency basis on behalf of large groups of employees who were fired in current weeks.

Trump administration need to make some foreign help payments by Monday, judge rules

The Trump administration should make some payments to foreign aid specialists and grant receivers 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 deadline for the payments. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali came at the end of a hearing in a lawsuit by professionals and non-profit grant recipients challenging President Donald Trump’s comprehensive freeze of U.S. foreign aid, a day after the groups got an increase from the Supreme Court. It buys the federal government to pay invoices submitted by the plaintiffs in the event before February 13.