Trump Administration Live Updates: News on Mass Firings, Deportations and White House Memes

Ahead of the match, the stakes were high for Canada, the birthplace of hockey. For weeks, President Trump has threatened to devastate the Canadian economy with tariffs and mockingly belittled the nation by suggesting it become the United States’ 51st state.

Mr. Trudeau’s swift riposte after the game tapped into an anger that has simmered across Canada since Mr. Trump took office on Jan. 20. His message was echoed from across the political aisle. “The true North, strong, free and golden,” Pierre Poilievre, Canada’s opposition leader, wrote on X.

The political tensions had been spilling over into sports arenas for weeks; the U.S. national anthem was loudly booed at N.B.A. and N.H.L. games in Canada.

That did not deter Mr. Trump from repeating his taunt before the championship game.

“I think they have to become the 51st state,” he said during a speech on Thursday in Washington. “And you heard the people booing the national anthem, but I think ultimately they’ll be praising the national anthem.”

Mr. Trump went on to refer to Mr. Trudeau as “governor,” which he has done often in recent weeks.

Mr. Trump also called the U.S. team to express his support. At the White House, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he was looking forward to watching the game. “And we look forward to the United States beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada,” she said.

Later, there were some boos at the Boston arena as Chantal Kreviazuk, a Canadian musician, sang “O Canada.”

There was a twist in her rendition too. She changed the words “in all of us command” to “that only us command.” Ms. Kreviazuk said on Instagram that the change was in response to the talk of annexation.

Mr. Trump’s repeated digs have had a unifying effect in Canada, forging a rare consensus among the public and the political class despite the country going through one of its most divided political periods in recent history.

A survey published last month by the Angus Reid Institute, a research center, found that 90 percent of Canadian respondents were opposed to being a part of the United States.

The political significance of a win was not lost on the team, Jon Cooper, the Team Canada coach, said after the game on Thursday.

“Not only, like, our team, but Canada needed a win,” Mr. Cooper said. “This one was different. This wasn’t a win for themselves. This was a win for 40-plus million people.”

Senators spent most of the night on a well-worn parliamentary ritual: the hourslong marathon of votes on proposals that will never become law (and were never intended to) known as a “vote-a-rama.” In a chamber where the average age is 65, the all-nighter brought senators to the floor for a binge of procedural motions and floor speeches delivered to a mostly empty chamber that served to frame a feud between Republicans and Democrats over the nation’s priorities and how federal money should be spent.

As senators slowly made their way into the chamber late Thursday afternoon, it was clear that Washington was in for a long night. Aides hauled thick briefing folders in one hand and caffeinated beverages in another.

Republicans were there to make the case for their budget resolution, which must be adopted to allow them to push through President Trump’s ambitious agenda. Democrats came primed to build their public case against Mr. Trump’s plans, and begin laying the groundwork to exact a political price from Republicans for supporting them.

“This is going to be a long, drawn-out fight,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said as members of his party lined up to offer amendments to fight Mr. Trump’s fiscal agenda. “Democrats are going to hold the floor all day long and all night long to expose how Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires while gutting things Americans care about most.”

Passing a budget resolution was a key step toward enacting Mr. Trump’s fiscal agenda, a process that has been complicated by competing strategies among House and Senate Republicans about the best way to accomplish the president’s priorities.

“People are counting on us,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and the chairman of the Budget Committee, declared on the floor moments before the rally of votes began. “They’re counting on this Republican majority to give the president the money he needs to do the job that he promised to do, and we’re going to deliver.”

“If it’s 5 o’clock in the morning — I don’t care how long it takes,” Mr. Graham added. In the end, it did take until nearly 5 a.m.

For Democrats, who did not have enough votes to block Republicans’ budget, the vote-a-rama was a way to slow its roll, challenge G.O.P. priorities and, when possible, force Republicans into uncomfortable votes intended to create a damaging record to attack them on during next year’s midterm elections. The rules of the Senate allow members to propose an unlimited number of budget amendments, meaning voting could continue until Democrats lost steam and allowed the debate to come to a close.

Their first attempt to box in G.O.P. senators came in the form of a proposal that would bar tax cuts for any person making more than $1 billion a year. It was meant to drive home Democrats’ argument that Republicans want to slash spending for ordinary Americans just to reward billionaires with tax cuts.

“I ask my Republican colleagues: Yes or no? Do you believe billionaires should get another tax break or not?” Mr. Schumer said as he introduced the proposal. It failed nearly entirely along party lines, setting the tone for a night when Democrats were not expected to prevail in making any substantive change to the budget blueprint.

As the night wore on, Democrats offered up similar proposals to protect food pricing and Medicaid funding.

Most of the votes played out along partisan lines, but some Republicans broke with their party to back Democratic proposals.

Two Republican senators broke ranks on multiple occasions during the night. Senator Susan Collins of Maine backed two Democratic proposals aimed at blocking tax cuts for the superrich, while both she and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri supported a measure to protect Medicaid funding for maternal health care. Mr. Hawley also voted in favor of an amendment seeking to curb the influence of hedge funds in the single-family housing market.

Despite those defections, the amendments failed. Still, Ms. Collins’s and Mr. Hawley’s votes could serve as political insulation down the line, allowing them to claim independence from party orthodoxy when it proves useful.

Last week, three flights were sent to Panama with people from countries such as China and Iran, where arranging deportations is more complicated for the United States because of a lack of diplomatic relations with their governments or other roadblocks.

In Panama, the migrants managed to communicate with reporters from The New York Times while being held in a hotel, drawing attention to their uncertain situation. Some said they had left their countries to escape persecution and feared for their safety if they were to be sent back.

Thursday, when the plane landed at Juan Santamaría International Airport outside San José, a group of reporters that had gathered on the tarmac captured images of the migrants on board.

They held their cellphones to the windows, revealing both that they were not in handcuffs and had not had their devices taken away.

Officials said 135 people were on the flight: 65 children and 70 adults, including one older person and two pregnant women. “They are all families; they come as family units,” said Omer Badilla, the deputy minister of governance and director of Costa Rica’s migration authority.

Another 65 migrants would be arriving to the country in the coming days, Mr. Badilla said, noting that Costa Rica had committed to receiving 200 migrants in total.

The flight carried people from more than a dozen nations, officials said. More than half of the group was from just a few countries: Uzbekistan, China and Armenia.

There were also people on board from Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Russia and Georgia.

Asked by a reporter what would happen to the people who refused to be returned to their country of origin, Mr. Badilla said: “Most, or almost all, want to return to their countries. Specific cases will be addressed if there is a particular request.”

He said: “This is simply a request from the United States for collaboration. We understand that they already were in the deportation process, and what the U.S. is doing is seeking an ally to assist in supplying a platform for transporting them to their countries.”

The plane was surrounded by about 20 police officers. The deportees were disembarked at a distance from the scrum of reporters and immediately boarded onto several buses marked “tourism” that were waiting on the runway.

When Costa Rica’s president, Rodrigo Chaves, spoke of the flight at a news conference this week, he said his country’s government had felt compelled to accept the deportees in particular because they included children.

Costa Rica has touted its record on upholding human rights, including when it comes to the treatment of migrants.

From the airport, the migrants would be transferred to a remote facility called the Temporary Attention Center for Migrants, officials said. It lies in the southern canton of Corredores, more than 200 miles from the capital.

“We’ve thrown out the possibility of a hotel, precisely to avoid a situation similar to that in Panama,” Mr. Badilla, the migration official, told The Associated Press.

Costa Rica’s government has stipulated that the migrants remain in the country no more than 30 days before being sent to their countries of origin, an operation that it has said will be supervised by United Nations agencies, including the International Organization for Migration, and financed by the United States. However, Mr. Chaves has conceded that in some cases arranging deportations could take longer.

In her letter on Thursday, Ms. Willis said the House Judiciary Committee should stop trying to interfere in her investigation of Mr. Trump and focus its attention instead on the Justice Department’s handling of the Adams case. Eight federal prosecutors have resigned from the Justice Department in protest over its efforts to dismiss the bribery and corruption charges against the mayor.

At a hearing in New York federal court on Wednesday, a senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, suggested that President Trump’s administration was justified in seeking to dismiss charges of corruption against a public official if the official was aiding the administration on other important matters. Mr. Adams has pledged to support Mr. Trump’s moves to crack down on unauthorized immigration, and some have accused him of doing so to persuade the Trump administration to have the corruption charges against him dropped.

Ms. Willis’s case is the last active criminal case against Mr. Trump. After the November election, the Justice Department moved to drop two prosecutions, one for election interference and one for his handling of classified documents. In January, Mr. Trump received an unconditional discharge, a rare and lenient alternative to jail or probation, after being convicted in a Manhattan fraud trial last year on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal.

Ms. Willis noted in her letter to Mr. Jordan that the Judiciary Committee had recently sought records from a number of her employees.

“Were you truly interested in ferreting out prosecutorial misconduct and corruption, you would stop wasting taxpayer money on your baseless pursuit of my Office and instead turn your attention to the Trump Administration’s Justice Department,” Ms. Willis wrote.

She also referred to a scathing letter to Mr. Bove written last week by the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, in which she criticized the move to drop the Adams case and offered her resignation, which was accepted.

Ms. Willis wrote that Ms. Sassoon “revealed a corrupt quid pro quo” involving the Justice Department’s decision to drop the charges. “As you are no doubt aware, Ms. Sassoon — along with at least six other senior-level Justice Department officials — resigned rather than carry out the unlawful order. Where is your outrage about this perversion of justice?” Ms. Willis wrote.

The Justice Department has rejected any notion of a quid pro quo. Asked for comment, the department referenced a letter that Mr. Bove had sent earlier this month in which he said that a memorandum from federal prosecutors in New York had “correctly noted” that “the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement.”

That assertion was undercut by an appearance Mr. Adams made on Fox News with Mr. Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, in which Mr. Homan said he would make sure Mr. Adams complied with immigration enforcement efforts. “If he doesn’t come through,” Mr. Homan said, “I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch — I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”

A spokesman for Mr. Jordan, Russell Dye, said in a statement on Thursday that “we will continue to conduct oversight to get answers for the American people,” adding that “if the office has nothing to hide, they will cooperate fully with our inquiries.”

While Ms. Willis’s case against Mr. Trump remains open, it is largely moribund. Georgia’s Court of Appeals disqualified Ms. Willis from pursuing the case in December, following revelations of a romantic relationship she had with the lawyer she hired to manage the prosecution. She has appealed the decision to the Georgia Supreme Court, which, like the state’s Court of Appeals, is dominated by Republican-appointed judges.

Others had indicated that they were considering running even before the announcement from Mr. McConnell, a pivotal player in obstructing major Democratic agenda items and stacking federal courts with conservatives.

Nate Morris, a Kentucky businessman and a Republican, said in a video posted on Feb. 11 that he was “seriously considering” running for either the Senate or for governor of Kentucky. Mr. Morris doubled down on his interest in the Senate in a video on Thursday.

“The candidates that are looking at this race, Andy Barr and Daniel Cameron, have refused to call out Mitch McConnell for the sabotage of President Trump’s agenda,” said Mr. Morris.

Several potential candidates also removed themselves from consideration on Thursday. Two top state Democrats, Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, will not be in the race, according to Mr. Beshear’s campaign manager and a spokesman for Ms. Coleman. Representative James Comer, a Republican, is not running in 2026 “but is strongly considering a run for governor in 2027,” according to his spokesman, Austin Hacker.

In the state’s last governor’s race, in 2023, Mr. Beshear, the incumbent, defeated Mr. Cameron. Stephen Voss, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky’s Department of Political Science, said that Mr. Cameron’s gubernatorial campaign would give him the most name recognition early on in the race for Mr. McConnell’s seat. But Mr. Voss also noted that Mr. Barr had “good fund-raising capabilities” and that Mr. Morris, who founded Rubicon, a software-based waste management company, would “be able to draw on his own resources to jump-start a campaign.”

On the Democrats’ side, Pamela Stevenson, a state representative, said that she would formally announce her intent to run for the Senate seat in a few weeks. Mr. Voss speculated that other high-ranking Democrats would also step into the race.

“We’re going to have an open Senate race early enough for the full democratic process to play out,” Mr. Voss said, adding that even people who are on the sidelines may enter the race. “Beshear might come under more external pressure from national Democrats.”

It seemed like a meme posted by a parody account, or something from a messaging forum like 4chan or Reddit. But the post was actually shared by the official social media accounts of the White House on Feb. 14, and it has been viewed by millions. The message was well received by many of Mr. Trump’s fans, or was at least a form of internet language they understand well. Other commenters were disturbed by its callousness.

Since Mr. Trump took office in January, the official social media accounts of his administration have delivered several posts referencing the deportation of undocumented people that appear to have the same tone as playful memes and other popular social media trends. While this isn’t the first presidential administration to use internet lingo as part of its social media strategy, Mr. Trump’s repeated use of it is a departure from previous administrations, and reinforces his belief in his expansive power to reshape all aspects of the government.

“President Trump is committed to using every direct line of communication to the American people,” Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that emphasized Mr. Trump’s embrace of various social media platforms.

In a post on Tuesday, the official White House account on X shared a video of a person in handcuffs preparing to board a plane, which was captioned “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” The caption was a reference to Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response videos, which are widely popular online for delivering pleasant sounds that create positive and therapeutic sensations for many.

“When you think about A.S.M.R. and the type of people who are watching those videos, it is a thing that people go to to be soothed,” said Amanda Brennan, an internet meme librarian and former head of editorial at Tumblr.

But there is nothing conventionally soothing about the notion of being locked in chains.

A day later, the official White House account on Instagram shared a post of an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time. Its caption, which had originally appeared as a message from Mr. Trump’s Truth Social account, read: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING.”

The image and text likened Mr. Trump to royalty and served as a follow-up message to his plan to halt the congestion pricing program that was recently implemented in New York City.

According to Ms. Brennan, a social-media strategy of embracing internet speak in a “lighthearted” manner was being adopted by official government accounts in a “sinister way” to speak to alt-right and MAGA audiences.

“It feels like the person in power is using the language of the less empowered to spread their message as a way to say, ‘Oh I’m just like you, I like A.S.M.R.’” she said. “The meaning and the heart of why people show up to those communities is ripped out.”

Last month, Meta announced that it would end its program of fact-checking social media posts on Facebook, Threads and Instagram, which was said to please Mr. Trump and his allies at the time. The website X, under the ownership of Elon Musk, a top aide to Mr. Trump, has also strayed from many of its original trust and safety policies.

The posts have been a hit with many of Mr. Trump’s supporters, some of whom doubled down on the message board-like memes with a reaction of “kek,” which is used on 4chan as a replacement for “lol.” But the posts have also enraged many others, and Ms. Brennan said that whether or not the White House’s strategy is to incite rage with its social media posts, their content, along with certain companies’ looser policies, may result in many platforms (and the trends that are born out of them) not feeling as safe as they once did.

The questions to ask, she said, include “how are the algorithms affecting this?”

“How much are the algorithms affecting how much it’s being seen and who it’s being shown to?” she continued. “How are tech companies allowing this?”

“The first month of President Trump’s second administration has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society,” Judge Cooper wrote.

Still, he said, “federal district judges are duty-bound to decide legal issues based on even-handed application of law and precedent — no matter the identity of the litigants or, regrettably at times, the consequences of their rulings for average people.”

Judge Cooper said that he was denying the unions’ request that he block the Trump administration from continuing its downsizing efforts because the matter should be first addressed with the agency that adjudicates labor disputes between federal employee unions and management, known as the Federal Labor Relations Authority.

Judge Cooper noted that if the unions lose in that venue, they could resume their court battle through the federal court of appeals.

Judge Cooper’s ruling in the case was similar to one that was made in a separate case last week by a judge in Massachusetts. In that case, the judge agreed labor unions representing federal workers did not have standing to challenge the Trump administration’s actions in federal court.

The I.R.S. employs about 100,000 accountants, lawyers and other staff across the country. The Biden administration was in the process of beefing up enforcement and modernizing the agency with an $80 billion investment, but President Trump wants to curb its powers and has dispatched Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency to scrutinize its computer systems.

A spokeswoman for the I.R.S. declined to provide an exact number for the layoffs, which some people familiar with the matter could be as low as 6,000 or as high as 7,000. The people were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the situation.

Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said on Thursday that the layoffs are “absolutely on the table for good reasons” and that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent believes that the agency could afford to lose more than 3,500 people.

Asked if the I.R.S. employees were being let go because of poor performance, Mr. Hassett said, “Our objective is to make sure that the employees that we pay are being productive and effective and there are more than 100,000 people working to collect taxes and not all of them are fully occupied.”

The Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said on Fox News on Wednesday that Mr. Trump wants to replace the I.R.S. with an “External Revenue Service” that would be funded by tariff revenue.

“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Mr. Lutnick said.

The Treasury had no comment about the job cuts.

In emails sent on Wednesday, I.R.S. managers told employees targeted for layoffs that they were not considered critical to filing season, the annual period when millions of Americans prepare their taxes. Still, the large layoff before the spring tax deadline has concerned some tax experts and Democrats that the I.R.S. could have trouble processing tax returns this year.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents I.R.S. workers, assailed the layoff as a critical mistake by the Trump administration. The labor group called the firings “arbitrary and unlawful.”

“Indiscriminate firings of I.R.S. employees around the country are a recipe for economic disaster,” said Doreen Greenwald, president of N.T.E.U. National. “In the middle of a tax filing season, when taxpayers expect prompt customer service and smooth processing of their tax returns, the administration has chosen to decimate the whole operation by sending dedicated civil servants to the unemployment lines.”

The firings at the I.R.S. are expected to hit recent hires of employees focused on the agency’s enforcement efforts. The tax agency has been trying to hire more lawyers and accountants who can audit wealthy Americans and large corporations to collect more of the tax that they owe. The I.R.S. estimates that roughly $600 billion in owed taxes go uncollected each year.

“These misguided layoffs will hurt everyday Americans who pay their taxes and count on the I.R.S. to pay refunds on time while encouraging wealthy people and large businesses to cheat on their taxes,” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University.

Mr. Hassett said that the I.R.S. was just a “small part” of the Trump administration’s plan to fire workers who were viewed as poor performers.

“I live in D.C.,” Mr. Hassett said. “Nobody’s going into the buildings, people aren’t commuting because people aren’t doing their jobs.”

“We’re fixing that and the I.R.S. is a small part of that picture.”

That was clear on Thursday, as firings continued across the federal government.

The Trump administration fired 243 probationary employees at the Transportation Security Administration, the agency confirmed on Thursday.

Those let go included T.S.A. officers and other administrative staff. Despite the cuts, the agency said, it is continuing to hire mission-critical positions.

T.S.A., which is part of the Homeland Security Department, was formed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Congress has charged the agency with protecting the nation’s transportation systems.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, T.S.A. terminated personnel due to performance and conduct issues during their probationary period,” Carter Langston, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement. “The agency is actively working to implement the administration’s priorities in full cooperation with D.H.S. to identify waste and to staff the mission essential positions that best fulfill D.H.S.’ mission.”

The C.I.A. also moved to dismiss an unspecified number of officers who were working on recruiting and diversity issues, according to former officials. A federal judge has halted those actions and will hold a hearing on Monday on whether the C.I.A. can proceed with the dismissals, which would be the largest mass firing since 1977.

Mark Walker and Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.