March 21, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

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Stephen A. Smith calls out the Trump admin's DEI purge

09:54 • Source: CNN

Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith joined CNN on Friday and sharply condemned the Trump administration’s efforts to purge diversity, equity and inclusion-related content from Pentagon websites, saying the removal of articles about sports hero Jackie Robinson and other historic service members was “egregious” and represented an effort to “gloss over and scrape history.”

Some context: The Pentagon’s purge resulted in the removal of thousands of articles and images that were either completely unrelated to DEI issues, or that commemorated war heroes and historically significant service members such as Robinson, the first African American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era. Some content was ultimately restored as the Pentagon responded to criticism of the moves.

The administration later said the removals were an inadvertent software mistake, but Smith said that defense was not good enough. “You know what that’s about. It’s about plausible deniability,” Smith told Tapper.

About Smith: Smith rose to national fame as a sports commentator with ESPN, and has broadened his commentary to include social issues and politics in recent years. His tough-love approach to Democrats and iconoclastic media presence have propelled his name to the fringes of conversations about the 2028 presidential primary, earning him fans as some in the party weigh more unconventional paths back to the White House.

Smith has stoked speculation about his intentions with a string of media comments, and by hosting several Democratic leaders on his podcast in recent weeks.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One en route to New Jersey, on Friday.

President Donald Trump on Friday downplayed his involvement in invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to deport Venezuelan migrants, saying for the first time that he hadn’t signed the proclamation, even as he stood by his administration’s move.

“I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” Trump told reporters before leaving the White House on Friday evening.

The president made his comments when asked to respond to Judge James Boasberg’s criticism in court on Friday that the proclamation was “signed in the dark” of night.

The proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport people who the administration accuses of being affiliated with a Venezuelan gang appears in the Federal Register with Trump’s signature at the bottom.

Trump raised Rubio’s name without prompting from reporters. When he was then asked a hypothetical question about whether he would send another deportation flight to El Salvador tonight amid the ongoing litigation, Trump said it would be up to Rubio.

“I would say that I’d have the Secretary of State handle it, because I’m not really involved in that, but the concept of getting bad people murderers, rapists, drug dealers, all of the, these are really some bad people out of our country. I ran on that. I won on that,” Trump said.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

A member of the Seattle Fire Department inspects a burned Tesla Cybertruck at a Tesla lot in Seattle, on Monday, March 10.

The FBI is asking the public to be on the lookout for signs of potential attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities.

As CNN has reported, multiple facilities belonging to Elon Musk’s company have been targeted in recent months by people setting fires to vehicles and vandalizing buildings. The FBI says the incidents have happened in at least nine states since the beginning of the year.

The FBI alert asked Americans to look out for violent threats related to specific Tesla properties online. It also noted unusual behavior that could be a warning sign at Tesla facilities, including people inquiring about or taking photos of security measures, or trying to access restricted areas.

“Individuals require little planning to use rudimentary tactics, such as improvised incendiary devices and firearms, and may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes,” the FBI said, urging anyone with information about these crimes to contact law enforcement.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its local partners have arrested nearly 400 people it claims are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua since President Donald Trump took office, including dozens in the past 48 hours, according to the agency’s acting director.

Key context: The Trump administration has deported hundreds of migrants, claiming many are gang members, while at times refusing to reveal their identities or the evidence against them. Some relatives of presumed deported migrants have described a murky process that disappeared people they say have no ties to organized crime, drawing criticism from Democrats and civil rights groups.

There is an ongoing court battle over the legality of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members.

CNN’s Michael Williams contributed to this report.

The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday it is reducing the staff of three offices dedicated to oversight within the department.

The department is cutting jobs at the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN.

The move comes amid continuing concerns over the Trump administration’s sprawling deportation efforts, which critics say threaten to encroach on immigrants’ civil liberties.

“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining DHS’s mission. Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operation,” McLaughlin claimed in a statement. “DHS remains committed to civil rights protections but must streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement. These reductions ensure taxpayer dollars support the Department’s core mission: border security and immigration enforcement.”

Some context: The department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties investigates public complaints of civil rights violations stemming from DHS activities and was established by the same post-9/11 law that created the Department of Homeland Security. The ombudsman offices independently review agencies within DHS, including the agency that administers immigration detention.

Earlier this month, a pair of Democratic senators, describing “troubling reports” that the department’s civil rights office would be severely reduced or eliminated, told DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in a letter that reducing the agency’s civil rights division could “jeopardize” the ability of DHS to protect Americans’ civil liberties, while listing several examples of the type of work it is involved in.

Donald Trump prepares to speak at the Trump National Golf Club on June 13, 2023 in Bedminster, New Jersey.

President Donald Trump has been something of a homebody since returning to office, spending weekdays at the White House and most weekends at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

This weekend, he’s adding another one of his homes to the rotation: Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

For the first time this season, Trump is visiting his New Jersey golf club, located in Somerset County, about an hour from Manhattan. He left the White House on Friday evening and is set to spend much of Saturday there before he is scheduled to attend the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia.

“We’re going to Bedminster now for work — we have some work,” Trump told reporters before boarding Marine One.

The president’s out-of-town travel this year can be traced almost entirely through high-profile sporting events, including the Super Bowl in New Orleans on February 9 and NASCAR’s Daytona 500 a week later.

Trump, who attended the national wrestling championship in 2023, has attended several Ultimate Fighting Championship events with one of his top supporters, Dana White, who runs the organization.

Since returning to power, Trump has logged significantly less travel than most presidents.

He visited North Carolina and California in January, surveying storm and fire damage, but has not traveled to any states beyond Florida since then. He is barred from running for another term, and aides say he prefers opening the White House to people from across the country over traveling.

In the first 60 days of his second term, Trump has spent at least 18 nights at home in Florida — every weekend but one, when he stayed in Washington to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference. During his four years out of office, Trump frequently ridiculed Joe Biden for spending weekends at home in Delaware.

While Trump usually waits to visit his New Jersey Club until May, when the Mar-a-Lago season ends for the summer, he is taking an early trip this weekend. He is expected to resume visits next month to his Florida home, which he calls the “Winter White House.”

A tense environment in the courtroom began immediately when Judge James Boasberg entered Friday’s hearing on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people the government accuses of being affiliated with a Venezuelan gang.

Boasberg put Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on the defensive within minutes, calling DOJ conduct in previous hearings and filings for the case “intemperate and disrespectful.”

The judge’s hands were constantly moving during the hearing — between putting his glasses on to read, taking them off for inquiry emphasis, and placing his hand on his lips and chin while pondering counsel arguments.

In a few instances, he even used his hands to act out the movement of alleged Tren de Aragua members from custody to planes, and a clutched fist to reference Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s custody of deportees.

Throughout the hearing, the judge looked to a stapled stack of pages, from which he read quotes and cited case law. Oftentimes, while Ensign responded to questions, Boasberg avoided eye contact, instead reading from the paper.

The judge lightened up as American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt took to the podium, often puckering his lips, raising his eyebrows and nodding in agreement with a slight smirk.

Gelernt especially got a rise out of Boasberg with dramatic head-nodding when the attorney said the administration was “rushing people on a plane,” called Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act “uncharted territory,” and said that the government’s position “gives the president extraordinary powers.”

US District Judge James Boasberg vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether officials in the Trump administration violated his orders temporarily blocking President Donald Trump’s use of a sweeping wartime authority to deport some migrants.

During the hearing, an attorney for the migrants challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act said they plan to submit new evidence that raises additional questions about the Justice Department’s claim that it was not feasible to bring back some of the migrants who were on flights to El Salvador at the time of the order.

A federal judge on Friday raised concerns about the policy implications of President Donald Trump’s use of a sweeping wartime authority to deport people the administration accuses of being affiliated with a Venezuelan gang, calling it an “unprecedented and expanded use” of the 18th-century law.

The comments from US District Judge James Boasberg show his discomfort with Trump’s approach to the law and signal how he might rule during a later phase of the case, when he decides whether Trump unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act in an effort to quickly remove some migrants. Much of Friday’s hearing focused on what role courts have in curtailing an administration’s interpretation of its powers under the law.

The policy implications of Trump’s invocation of the law, the judge said, “are awfully frightening.” Under the arguments pushed by Justice Department attorneys, the judge said a president could claim “that anybody is invading the United States,” necessitating another use of the wartime authority.

The hearing in DC District Court has ended. The judge has not issued a ruling on the request from the Trump administration that he wipe away his previous order blocking Alien Enemies Act-related deportations.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office of the White House on March 21, in Washington, DC.

In remarks from the Oval Office earlier today, President Donald Trump spoke about a wide range of topics while announcing a new US fighter jet alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The remarks capped a busy week for Trump, including just yesterday signing an order to begin dismantling the Department of Education.

Here’s a recap of some of the comments Trump made today:

On the Department of Education: Trump announced that the Small Business Administration will take up the Education Department’s student loan portfolio, while the Department of Health and Human Services will lead funding efforts for special needs students.

On the Russia-Ukraine war: Trump said he believed a full ceasefire to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is likely to happen “very soon.” The president said there was a contract being negotiated on dividing land between the two countries “as we speak” and that he is persistent in seeking an end to the war to stop the killing and save money on US military aid to Ukraine. He held back-to-back calls earlier this week with Russian President Vladmir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

On deportation efforts: Trump discarded claims today that the wrong people were sent to El Salvador after he invoked a sweeping wartime authority to target and deport migrants. Trump said he was told the migrants “went through a very strong vetting process.” This came just hours before Department of Justice lawyers faced the judge challenging Trump’s use of the act for the deportations in a hearing. Trump intensified his attacks on the judge in a social media post this morning, after having called for his impeachment earlier this week.

On tariffs: Trump said the reciprocal tariffs announcement he’s promised to make on April 2 won’t be set in stone, suggesting there could be some exceptions. “There’ll be flexibility,” he said, without elaborating on what that flexibility could look like in practice.

Trump also made at least nine false claims, including a series of wildly exaggerated statistics on a variety of topics. See our fact checks of those claims here.

During a hearing on the Trump administration’s bid to revive the president’s use of a wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants, Judge James Boasberg grilled a Justice Department lawyer about the administration’s response to an oral order from the judge last week.

He walked DOJ attorney Drew Ensign through a tick-tock of the proceedings in the case that were held Saturday, during which Boasberg ordered the government to immediately turn around planes that were carrying the migrants to El Salvador under President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

Remember: The administration did not turn the planes around based on the judge’s oral order, and in later court filings, said it did not consider Boasberg’s order binding until a written version landed on the docket later that evening.

“Did you not understand my statements in that hearing?” Boasberg asked Ensign on Friday.

Boasberg continued to grill Ensign on his lack of knowledge during Saturday’s hearing about the status of the flights, and his failure to obtain more information about the flights in a recess the court took that day for him to seek those details.

Judge James Boasberg kicked off a hearing on the Trump administration’s bid to revive the president’s use of a wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants by criticizing the tone the administration had taken in some of its filings.

Boasberg, who is the chief judge of the US district court in Washington, DC, told DOJ attorney Drew Ensign that the government had used “intemperate and disrespectful” language that he’s “never seen from the United States.”

President Donald Trump defended steps he’s taken to target top law firms who’ve clashed with him and his administration in the past, telling reporters on Friday that the firms are “not babies” but very “sophisticated people.”

On Thursday, the president announced that he was rescinding an executive order that suspended security clearances for lawyers and staff at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison after the New York-based firm agreed to dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of Trump’s term “to support the Administration’s initiatives,” according to the president.

The deal comes as the Trump administration cracks down on top law firms. Trump had signed the executive order targeting Paul Weiss a little over a week after he targeted the large firms Covington & Burling and Perkins Coie.

CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed reporting to this post.

President Donald Trump on Friday said the reciprocal tariffs announcement he’s promised to make on April 2 won’t be set in stone, suggesting there could be some exceptions.

However, he cited previous pleas from the big three US automakers for an exemption to the 25% tariffs on all Mexican and Canadian goods set to go into effect earlier this month. Initially, Trump responded by announcing cars and car parts would be exempt from 25% tariffs, granted they comply with the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal.

“I gave the American car companies a break because it would have been unfair if I didn’t,” Trump said. He later announced he’d give all products coming from Mexico and Canada the same treatment through April 2 if they comply with USMCA as well.

The Small Business Administration is cutting around 43% of its workforce, or about 2,700 positions, the agency’s chief Kelly Loeffler announced Friday.

The move comes amid the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce across agencies led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. It will be done via reductions, expiration of pandemic and term appointments, and voluntary resignations, according to SBA’s press release.

The agency said its core services wouldn’t be impacted – including its loan guarantee and disaster assistance programs, and its field and veteran operations.

In a video posted to X, Loeffler vowed to refocus SBA’s mission to empower job creators and end fiscal mismanagement that she attributed to the work of the prior administration.

Along with the cuts, President Donald Trump announced from the Oval Office today that SBA will take on student loans from the Department of Education as part of the administration’s efforts to dismantle the department.

President Donald Trump, speaking from the Oval Office Friday, said he believed a full ceasefire to end the war between Russia and Ukraine is likely to happen “very soon.”

“We are going to have a full ceasefire very soon in the Russia-Ukraine war,” Trump said.

The president said there was a contract being negotiated on dividing land between the two countries “as we speak.”

Trump, who recently held separate phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky about implementing a partial ceasefire, said he is persistent in seeking an end to the war to stop the killings and save the US the money being spent on military aid to Ukraine.

President Donald Trump swatted down the idea Friday that annexing Canada as the nation’s 51st state, as he’s repeatedly suggested, might cause an influx of Democratic voters, telling reporters he’s more focused on adding Canada’s “beautiful landmass” to the United States.

Earlier this week, Trump blasted Canada’s Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, telling Fox News in an interview the politician “is, stupidly, no friend of mine.”

“I don’t know, but [Poilievre] said negative things,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Tuesday. “I think it’s easier to deal actually, with a liberal, and maybe they’re going to win, but I don’t really care.”

But on Friday, he suggested there might be an untapped conservative majority in Canada.

“Just a little while ago, before I got involved and totally changed the election … the conservative was leading against, I call him Governor Trudeau,” Trump claimed. “So, you know, so I don’t know about that. I think Canada is a place, like a lot of other places, if you have a good candidate, the candidate’s gonna win.”

The National Weather Service has cut more forecast-critical weather balloon launches at eight sites in the United States due to staffing shortages brought on by the Trump administration’s effort to slash government employees and expenses.

The cuts will result in reduced forecast accuracy, not just for NWS forecasts but for all the private industry forecasts that rely on the agency’s data. Weather balloon launches are the backbone of global weather forecasts. Launched twice a day, they feed weather forecast models with twice-daily weather observations and provide the real-life starting point for those mathematical models to predict the future.

All launches have been suspended in Omaha, Nebraska, and Rapid City, South Dakota. They have been reduced to once a day at six other locations in Nebraska, South Dakota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan and Wyoming.

Workforce cuts: Hundreds of specialists were laid off from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration earlier this month, including NWS meteorologists and other experts. The agency is looking to fire or put on leave another 1,000 employees, CNN previously reported.

Experts in weather, climate and oceans told CNN the layoffs are a huge loss of knowledge and expertise that puts Americans more at risk of extreme weather.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks next to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on Friday, March 21.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the Air Force’s newest fighter jet, announced from the Oval Office on Friday afternoon, will provide the US “generations in the future of air dominance.”

Trump announced on Friday a contract was being awarded to Boeing to build the Air Force’s newest fighter aircraft, called the Next Generation Air Dominance Platform, or F-47. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in the Oval Office on Friday that the aircraft is the “crown jewel in the next generation air dominance family of systems,” which will help “write the next generation of modern aerial warfare.”

The F-47 will be the world’s first 6th-generation fighter, Allvin said in an additional statement released Friday by the Air Force, and will have “significantly longer ranger, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have a higher availability” than 5th generation fighter aircraft.