Trump set to eliminate the Department of Education TODAY in one of DOGE’s biggest moves yet: Live updates

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

President Donald Trump is holding an event in the East Room of the White House on Thursday.

At 4:00 p.m., Republican governors and state education commissioners will gather with Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon as the president signs the executive order.

The action will kick-off the dissolution of the federal Department of Education and send back control to the states.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

President Donald Trump announced the United States and Ukraine would be signing a deal ‘shortly’ on rare earth minerals.

Trump wants rights to the materials that are critical to technology, arguing they should be payback for all the aid Washington has given Kyiv.

The deal was originally going to be signed at the end of February but was scuttled when Trump and President Zelensky had it out in the Oval Office.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

Billionaire Elon Musk is proving to be a drag on President Donald Trump and his administration, according to new polling.

Blueprint, which looks at what Democrats need to do to win, conducted polling that looked at the DOGE leader’s work in the Trump administration as Trump has been in office for two months and it found while the president is lightly under water, Musk is down fifteen points in approval and half of voters say he’s not competent to manage a government agency.

The polling found 60 percent of Independents do not approve of Musk being given a role in the Trump administration while 20 percent of Republicans do not approve of him having a role.

Overall, 54 percent of voters disapprove of how Musk is handling his role as head of DOGE while only 38 percent approve.

Even among Republicans, Musk is down 20 points from Trump when it comes to his handling of the job as just 59 percent of Republicans approval of the tech billionaire’s work.

When it comes to key officials in the Trump administration, voters perceive Musk as having the most influence when it comes to policy decisions ahead of the party or Trump’s Cabinet.

Overall, 47 percent of voters including 50 percent of Independents want Musk to have less influence in the Trump administration policy decisions while just 29 percent overall believe he should have more.

62 percent of voters believe Trump should give Musk ‘much less’ or ‘somewhat less’ influence in policy.

But while Musk is seen as having a lot of influence in the Trump administration, voters do not see him as a ‘shadow president.’

‘What we consistently find across all of our testing in this poll, is that while voters see Musk as highly influential, over influential, they’re not persuaded by the idea that he’s somehow running the show, or that Donald Trump has ceded power to him,’ said lead pollster Evan Roth Smith.

He noted that suggests such messaging is not particularly effective, but what is effective is focusing on the consequences of Musk’s actions.

‘This is what concerns voters: it’s the threats to Social Security and Medicare, the threat to Medicaid as well the firings at these key agencies,’ he said.

‘It is a massive political vulnerability for the president if Democrats can successfully draw the line from the threat that Musk poses to these programs and that DOGE is promising to pose to these programs,’ Roth Smith added.

When it comes to agencies voters do not want DOGE to target, voters least support cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Social Security Administration and the National Park Service.

What voters were less concerned about were Musk’s conflicts of interest or personal life, the polling found.

The polling was conducted March 13-14 of 1,400 registered voters.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced new charges against three individuals on Thursday for the destruction of Tesla properties.

‘The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,’ Bondi said in a statement.

‘Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars,’ she continued.

The Justice Department said it is ‘committed to ending all acts of violence and arson directed at Tesla properties’ as there have been a wave of attacks on Telsa across the country as Elon Musk’s work with DOGE has enraged Americans across the country.

The Justice Department announced the arrest of one person accused of attacking a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon with eight Molotov cocktails.

The second person was arrested in Loveland, Colorado after being accused of attempting to light Teslas on fire with Molotov cocktails.

The third person is accused of writing profane messages against Trump around Tesla charging stations after lighting stations on fire in Charleston, South Carolina.

Donald Trump Jr., the eldest son of President Trump, was spotted at the White House Wednesday and Thursday.

Reporters saw him going into the West Wing, which is where the Oval Office is located.

Don Jr. did not join his father’s administration but remains involved in politics.

Michelle Obama revealed the real reason she won’t answer the Democrats’ call to run for president, saying bluntly it’s ‘never gonna happen.’

The former first lady had a candid conversation on her feelings about politics when she sat down with Kylie Kelce on the March 20 episode of Kelce’s Not Gonna Lie podcast.

She made it clear that, even though Democrats have approached her numerous times about running for president, she would never consider it, because of the affect it would have on daughters Malia and Sasha.

‘I was so glad when we got out of the White House,’ she told Kelce.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter:

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet stopped just short of calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to step aside at a town hall on Wednesday.

It comes as some Democrats have put Schumer on blast for voting to advance the House Republican spending bill last week. He’s been on defense ever since as some Democrats have called for their party to do more to fight back against President Trump and his agenda.

A few on the left have called for Schumer to step aside.

Bennet was speaking at a meeting in Golden, CO when he was asked about party leadership. He even acknowledged that he was dodging in answering the question.

‘I do think on the leadership question, it’s always better to you know, examine whether folks are in the right place, and we’re certainly going to have that conversation.’

The senator noted that he was the first Senate Democrat to say last year that the party would lose the November election in a landslide if it didn’t go in a different direction after President Biden’s June debate performance.

‘In dodging your question, let me just say it’s important for people to know, you know, when it’s time to go,’ Bennet said.

‘We’re going to have conversations I’m sure in the foreseeable future about all the Democratic leadership,’ he also said.

It comes after Maryland Democratic Congressman Glenn Ivey said it may be time for new Democratic leadership in the Senate on Tuesday.

CNN reported last week that Bennet erupted in a private meeting that Democratic leadership had ‘no strategy, no plan, and no message’ on the spending bill.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

American George Glezmann was released by his Taliban captors this week after two years as a hostage.

Glezmann, 65, departed the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Wednesday evening en route to Doha, where he met with U.S. hostage envoy Adam Boehler along with a team from the Qatari Foreign Ministry.

Boehler led the Trump administration’s negotiations for the release of Glezmann.

This is the third person to be released from Taliban captivity since Trump took office in January.

But the latest release comes after two other American hostages – Ryan Corbett and William Mckenty – were freed earlier this year under the conditions struck by a deal under President Joe Biden to exchange a Taliban member in U.S. custody.

By Emily Goodin, senior White House correspondent

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified President Donald Trump’s plans for the Department of Education, saying ‘critical functions’ will remain.

‘Pell grants and student loans will still be run out of the Department in Washington, DC, but the great responsibility of education, educating our nation’s students will return to the states,’ she told reporters at the White House.

She also said civil rights issues, mediation, and other teams will stay in place.

‘Any critical functions of the department, such as that will remain but again, we’re greatly reducing the scale and the size of this department,’ she said.

This afternoon, Trump will sign a long-anticipated executive order that directs Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take ‘all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.’

JD Vance joked that he would need ‘four shots of vodka’ to sound like his predecessor Kamala Harris in a radio interview Thursday morning.

The vice president spoke about Harris, his relationship with Donald Trump, and his former opponent Tim Walz’s threat to ‘kick everybody’s a**.’

The release of additional files on John F. Kennedy’s assassination also revealed the social security numbers of more than 200 people, sparking outrage over the security breach.

‘It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,’ former Trump campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, whose private information was included in the release, told The Washington Post.

The Treasury Department has slapped a fourth round of sanctions targeting Iranian oil sales.

This time, the sanctions hit a Chinese ‘teapot’ refinery, the China-based Shandong Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical Co., Ltd. The administration says it bought oil from the Yemen-linked Houthis, a group the U.S. targeted with air strikes over the weekend.

Treasury is also sanctioning eight tankers it says are part of Iran’s ‘shadow fleet’.

Trump said he was restarting his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on Iran. On Wednesday he warned Iran to stop supplying the Houthis ‘immediately’ and said the group will be ‘completely annihilated.’

A Venezuelan man who got deported to El Salvador under accusation of being in a violent gang is actually a pro soccer player whose tattoo celebrates one of the game’s most storied clubs, his lawyer told the court.

The Department of Homeland Security says the man’s crown tattoo establishes that he is in the dreaded Tren de Aragua gang, and placed him in maximum security before jetting him out of the country amid a constitutional clash.

His lawyer says the body art is because he roots for Real Madrid while playing pro ball in Venezuala and coaching youth soccer.

The truth may never be known, because he was already flown out of the country with more than 200 other prisoners a month before his April 17 immigration hearing.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Barron Trump is celebrating his 19th birthday Thursday, March 20.

The youngest – but at 6’7″ the tallest – of President Donald Trump’s children and the only one he shares with First Lady Melania is currently in his first year of business school at New York University.

Amid the second term for Trump, many Americans speculate over what is in store for the political future of his children – including for his youngest.

Barron, though still only in his teen years, seems to be the new favorite for Republicans who want to see the Trump political empire continue.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian attacks on his country are continuing despite President Donald Trump’s attempt to broker a partial ceasefire.

‘Russian strikes on Ukraine do not stop, despite their propaganda claims. Every day and every night, nearly a hundred or more drones are launched, along with ongoing missile attacks. With each such launch, the Russians expose to the world their true attitude towards peace,’ Zelensky wrote on X.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz head back to Saudi Arabia this weekend to hold more peace talks in Jeddah.