Reuters US Domestic News Summary

It was one of several issues on which Makary, a Johns Hopkins physician, kept his cards close to his chest while facing 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 told his cabinet members on Thursday that they, not Elon Musk, have the final say on staffing and policy at their agencies, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

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

The U.S. State Department will use artificial intelligence to revoke visas of foreign students who it perceives as supporters of Palestinian Hamas militants, Axios reported on Thursday, citing senior State Department officials. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to combat antisemitism and has pledged to deport non-citizen college students and others who took part 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 unspecified number of new officers

The Central Intelligence Agency fired a slew of recent hires this week, three people familiar with the matter said, cuts that current 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 presides over massive federal workforce reductions 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 brought together by Democratic attorneys general lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump's federal cuts, saying the president was ignoring judges who blocked his executive orders and harming former service members. They spoke at a sometimes raucous town hall on Wednesday night organized by the country's 23 Democratic attorneys general, who have filed lawsuits to ask judges to block a string of Trump executive orders, including his suspension of trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans and financial support.

'We're in a dark space,' US judge says on rising threats

Threats against U.S. judges are rising and lawyers should do more to push back against heated rhetoric, four federal judges said in a panel discussion on Thursday. Speaking at an American Bar Association meeting on white collar crime in Miami, U.S. District Judge Richard Boulware of Las Vegas federal court said threats against the judiciary had gone up "exponentially."

Trump's FDA nominee tepidly backs role for vaccine advisers in guarded Senate appearance

Martin Makary, President Donald Trump's nominee to run the U.S. FDA, told lawmakers on Thursday he would convene a committee of vaccine advisers but said he would reevaluate which scientific issues require their input. It was one of several issues on which Makary, a Johns Hopkins physician, kept his cards close to his chest while facing 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 told his cabinet members on Thursday that they, not Elon Musk, have the final say on staffing and policy at their agencies, 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 room and told the cabinet he was good with Trump's plan, the source said.

Push for permanent US daylight saving time frozen as Trump says Americans are divided

A three-year congressional effort to make daylight saving time permanent in the United States appears to have halted, with President Donald Trump saying on Thursday that Americans are evenly divided over the issue. Daylight saving time - putting the clocks forward one hour during the summer half of the year to make the most of the longer evenings - has been in place in nearly all of the United States since the 1960s, but proponents have pushed to make it year-round.

Sean 'Diddy' Combs faces new indictment, is accused of 'forced labor'

U.S. prosecutors on Thursday unveiled a new indictment against Sean "Diddy" Combs, accusing the hip-hop mogul of forcing employees 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 pleaded not guilty.

US federal workers hit back at Trump mass firings with class action complaints

U.S. government employees who have been fired in the Trump administration's purge of recently hired workers are responding with class action-style complaints claiming that the mass firings are illegal and tens of thousands of people should get their jobs back. Lawyers at two firms said on Thursday that they had filed six appeals with the federal Merit Systems Protection Board since last week and, along with other law firms, plan to bring about 15 more on an agency-by-agency basis on behalf of large groups of workers who were fired in recent weeks.

Trump administration must make some foreign aid payments by Monday, judge rules

The Trump administration must make some payments to foreign aid contractors 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 request 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 contractors and non-profit grant recipients challenging President Donald Trump's wide-ranging freeze of U.S. foreign aid, a day after the groups got a boost from the Supreme Court. It orders the government to pay invoices submitted by the plaintiffs in the case before February 13.