President Trump threatened on Monday to block the opening of a new bridge between the United States and Canada if Canadian officials did not address a long and growing list of grievances, escalating diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

Amid a trade war and a deepening rift between the United States and its northern neighbor, Mr. Trump said that he would “not allow” the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, scheduled to open early this year for traffic between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve.”

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobbying group, denounced the president’s threat in a statement, writing that “whether this proves real or simply threatened to keep uncertainty high — blocking or barricading bridges is a self-defeating move.”

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Trump would block the opening of the bridge. Its construction was paid for by Canada, and a public-private arrangement , under which Canada and Michigan would jointly operate the crossing, gives Michigan part ownership.

One possible avenue would be for Mr. Trump to declare an emergency. Under the law, Customs and Border Protection can temporarily close a port of entry “when necessary to respond to a specific threat to human life or national interests.” Mr. Trump has often invoked emergency statutes for events and circumstances that are largely considered routine to make use of the expanded authority that doing so grants him.

The Trump administration wants some of the world’s largest technology companies to publicly commit to a new compact governing the rapid expansion of AI data centers, according to two administration officials granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

A draft of the compact obtained by POLITICO lays out commitments designed to ensure energy-hungry data centers do not raise household electricity prices, strain water supplies or undermine grid reliability, and that the companies driving demand also carry the cost of building new infrastructure.

The proposed pact, which is not final and could be subject to change, is framed as a voluntary agreement between President Donald Trump and major U.S. tech companies and data center developers. It could bind OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other AI giants to a broad set of energy, water and community principles. None of these companies immediately responded to a request for comment.

The initiative, which the administration wants to roll out with a splashy White House event, has yet to be formally announced – and it remains unclear which companies have agreed to the compact or been invited to participate.

A judge on Monday blocked California from enforcing a new law sharply limiting when federal agents can wear masks while engaged in deportation operations.

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder rejected the Trump administration’s claim that ICE agents need to wear masks to prevent doxing. However, in a 30-page decision, the judge said California’s “No Secret Police Act” appears to violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by discriminating against the federal government because the law’s provisions do not apply to state or local law enforcement officers.

“The Act treats federal law enforcement officers differently than similarly situated state law enforcement officers,” Snyder concluded.

But the judge also turned down the federal government’s request to block another California law aimed at abuses in immigration enforcement: the “No Vigilantes Act.” It requires most local, state and federal law enforcement personnel to display their name or badge number while on duty.

Snyder, a Clinton appointee based in Los Angeles, said that law is likely to pass constitutional muster because it applies more broadly, including to California officials. She also suggested the anti-masking law would be constitutional if it were broadened to cover state and local law enforcement as well.

The Justice Department is seeking to erase the criminal conviction of longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon for defying a 2021 subpoena from congressional investigators probing his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In a motion signed by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — and without the signature of any career prosecutors — the Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to dismiss the two-count indictment that DOJ brought against Bannon more than four years ago. Nichols, a Trump appointee, presided over a week-long jury trial of Bannon in 2022 that resulted in his conviction on criminal contempt charges.

Federal prosecutors brought those charges in November 2021 after the Democratic-led House voted to hold Bannon in contempt. The Jan. 6 select committee, convened that year by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had subpoenaed Bannon to describe his contacts with key organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol that day. They also hoped to learn details about his contacts with President Donald Trump in his effort to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

The end of the case is, in some ways, symbolic. Bannon already served a four-month prison sentence in 2024 for his conviction on the charges. But he has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which was awaiting a response from the Justice Department before Monday’s move by Pirro. If Nichols grants the motion to dismiss, it would likely end the pending Supreme Court case and erase Bannon’s jury conviction.

Solicitor General John Sauer confirmed this goal in a brief filing to the justices Monday.

Kyle Cheney
‪@kyledcheney.bsky.social‬

JUST IN: DOJ is trying to help Steve Bannon erase his conviction for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee. Motion has no career prosecutor on it, just signed by US Attorney Pirro.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.237437/gov.uscourts.dcd.237437.207.0.pdf

A recent survey found that nearly half of Floridians are considering leaving the state due to cost-of-living concerns, with 80 percent of respondents citing concerns about housing affordability and over 40 percent stating they believe the so-called “American Dream” no longer exists.

Florida lawmakers have come up with a number of proposals to address affordability concerns, while another has garnered concerns that it could push more Floridians into poverty.

A panel of Florida lawmakers on Wednesday, for instance, advanced one bill (HB 221) that would allow certain types of workers to temporarily “opt out” of being paid minimum wage, despite critics warning the bill would open the floodgates to exploitation and legalize cheap labor.

Under the proposal, workers in Florida who are enrolled in an internship program, pre-apprenticeship, work-study program or “other similar work-based learning opportunity” would be allowed to sign a waiver opting out of being paid Florida’s minimum wage, at least temporarily. Adults would be permitted to waive their minimum wage rights for up to 252 days (or two college semesters), while minors under age 18 would be permitted to do so for 126 days (about one college semester).

Workers, under the proposal, would be able to opt out of being paid the Florida minimum wage of $14 an hour — equal to $29, 120 a year working full-time — but would need to be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. That wage floor hasn’t budged since 2009. Florida’s minimum wage, in contrast, is scheduled to rise to $15 an hour later this year as the result of a constitutional amendment that was approved by more than 6 million Florida voters in 2020.

A recent survey found that nearly half of Floridians are considering leaving the state due to cost-of-living concerns, with 80 percent of respondents citing concerns about housing affordability and over 40 percent stating they believe the so-called “American Dream” no longer exists.

Florida lawmakers have come up with a number of proposals to address affordability concerns, while another has garnered concerns that it could push more Floridians into poverty.

A panel of Florida lawmakers on Wednesday, for instance, advanced one bill (HB 221) that would allow certain types of workers to temporarily “opt out” of being paid minimum wage, despite critics warning the bill would open the floodgates to exploitation and legalize cheap labor.

Under the proposal, workers in Florida who are enrolled in an internship program, pre-apprenticeship, work-study program or “other similar work-based learning opportunity” would be allowed to sign a waiver opting out of being paid Florida’s minimum wage, at least temporarily. Adults would be permitted to waive their minimum wage rights for up to 252 days (or two college semesters), while minors under age 18 would be permitted to do so for 126 days (about one college semester).

Workers, under the proposal, would be able to opt out of being paid the Florida minimum wage of $14 an hour — equal to $29, 120 a year working full-time — but would need to be paid at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. That wage floor hasn’t budged since 2009. Florida’s minimum wage, in contrast, is scheduled to rise to $15 an hour later this year as the result of a constitutional amendment that was approved by more than 6 million Florida voters in 2020.

Top Republicans are increasingly worried about private polling that paints a dire picture of the midterms — and it's not just the House they're afraid of losing, it's also the Senate.

Why it matters: President Trump has warned Republicans that losing their slim House majority could lead to a third impeachment. But a Democratic takeover of the Senate would be a political earthquake — and neuter his last two years in office.

Zoom in: For the first time, GOP strategists are telling Axios that losing the Senate — where Republicans have a 53-47 majority — is a distinct possibility, and that they'll have to fight harder than expected to keep control.

Operatives say they've reviewed polling that shows the GOP facing competitive Senate races not just in traditional battlegrounds such as Michigan, Maine and North Carolina, but also in conservative states like Alaska, Iowa and Ohio.

Top GOP strategists acknowledge that immigration and the economy — the two issues that drove Trump's win in 2024 — are now liabilities.

"A year ago, I would have told you we were almost guaranteed to win the Senate," one GOP operative who's reviewed internal polling told Axios. "Today, I would have to tell you it's far less certain."

I’ve written before about the deeply contested (and contestable) reinterpretation of federal immigration law that the Trump administration adopted last summer, under which any non-citizen who was never lawfully admitted to the United States is subject not just to arrest, but to mandatory detention with no opportunity for release on bond for the duration of their removal proceedings.

This argument, which applies even to those who have lived in the United States (lawfully)1 for decades; even to those who at one point had “Temporary Protected Status”; even to those who have an asylum application pending, is based on the analytically and linguistically flawed claim that such individuals are “arriving aliens” who are “seeking admission” to the United States. (As one district judge put it last August, “someone who enters a movie theater without purchasing a ticket and then proceeds to sit through the first few minutes of a film would not ordinarily then be described as ‘seeking admission’ to the theater.”)

As I explained back in December, the Trump administration’s novel interpretation of a 29-year-old statute that five previous presidents (including Trump) had interpreted differently is not just the putative basis for so much of the controversial behavior in which ICE, CBP, and other federal agencies have been engaged over the last six months; it has been overwhelmingly rejected by federal district judges from across the geographic and ideological spectrum. According to Politico’s Kyle Cheney (who’s done truly exceptional work tracking these cases) reports, “at least 360 judges [have] rejected the expanded detention strategy—in more than 3,000 cases—while just 27 backed it in about 130 cases.” (Yes, this is the same issue that has caused the backlog and mess in the federal district court in Minneapolis in which Chief Judge Schiltz recently accused ICE of violating nearly 100 court orders—all of which ordered the release of individuals the government was purporting to hold under this interpretation—and that led a government lawyer to have a widely noted public breakdown in court last week.)

Well, late Friday night, in a ruling handed down just two days after oral argument, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit adopted the extreme minority view—holding that, yes, the government can indefinitely detain without bond millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety. The Fifth Circuit’s opinion was written by Judge Edith Jones and joined in full by Judge Kyle Duncan—two of the most reactionary, right-wing federal appellate judges in the country (newsletter readers may recall my November 2024 run-in with Judge Jones; perhaps she’ll add this issue of the newsletter to her folder of my work).

Hours after an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good inside her S.U.V. on a Minneapolis street last month, a senior federal prosecutor in Minnesota sought a warrant to search the vehicle for evidence in what he expected would be a standard civil rights investigation into the agent’s use of force.

The prosecutor, Joseph H. Thompson, wrote in an email to colleagues that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that specializes in investigating police shootings, would team up with the F.B.I. to determine whether the shooting had been justified and lawful or had violated Ms. Good’s civil rights.

But later that week, as F.B.I. agents equipped with a signed warrant prepared to document blood spatter and bullet holes in Ms. Good’s S.U.V., they received orders to stop, according to several people with knowledge of the events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle.

The Office of Personnel Management announced a final rule creating Schedule F (now renamed Schedule Policy/Career). This allows Trump to remove job protections and fire tens of thousands of federal employees who hold policymaking roles, another step in politicizing public services under his personalist regime.

Here are some quick takes, which I will revise and expand as time goes on.

Even with extreme politicization, Schedule F still matters

When I started writing about the risks of a second Trump administration at the end of his first term in office I focused on Schedule F. Now, that focus seems a little naive. The degree of politicization we have actually witnessed is on a scale that I, who could be fairly counted as one of the biggest Cassandras on this topic, did not anticipate.

About 350,000 employees have been pushed out of government, disproportionately in agencies that are seen as more liberal. Federal hirings, annual performance evaluations, and even employee awards must now consider how loyal employees are to President Trump, and are closely monitored by political appointees.

As I’ve detailed previously, employees with stronger protections than those afforded by Schedule F have been fired because they are related to the wrong person, because the investigated abuses of power, because they were tagged by the MAGA online right as being disloyal, because they refused to break the law by firing others without cause, because they are trans, because they provided accurate information to a judge, because they made public statements about the effects of the President’s policies on their agencies, or, for no reason at all.

Even as politicized reprisals against career civil servants are a fact of life of life, internal protections against such reprisals, like the Merit Systems Protection Board, have been defanged to the point of toothlessness, meaning that an employee must now go to the courts if they are treated unfairly, even as the Supreme Court has offered little reason for optimism

.

The President already effectively has an at-will work force.