Trump updates: Zelenskyy tells Vance Ukraine needs ‘security guarantees’

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You can find our story on how Vice President JD Vance condemned European countries during his first international address here.

This live page will soon be closing. Here are today’s top events:

• Vice President JD Vance delivered a fiery speech on his first international trip, accusing European allies of backsliding on free speech and deriding their policies on migration.
• The US vice president also became the highest-ranking Trump official to meet with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, amid concerns over the US president’s call with Russia’s Putin this week.
• Democrats condemned Trump’s freeze on foreign aid, a day after a judge temporarily paused its implementation.
• Arab countries have called for a “Gaza Riviera” in rebuke to Trump’s plan for the US to take over the Palestinian enclave.

The Trump administration has announced dramatic cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of a broader move away from environmental regulations and towards a smaller federal workforce.

“EPA has terminated 388 probationary employees after a thorough review of agency functions in accordance with President Trump’s executive orders,” spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in a statement.

Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has welcomed a court’s temporary suspension of Trump’s freeze on foreign assistance.

As we reported earlier, a US judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from cancelling foreign aid contracts and awards that were in place before the Republican president took office on January 20.

“The court’s temporary injunction independently confirms what I’ve said all along – the Trump Administration’s reckless freeze on critical foreign assistance that Congress appropriated is a shortsighted and illegal abuse of power,” Meeks said in a statement.

“If the Trump Administration wants to review or revise various foreign assistance efforts, they could do so without an arbitrary, wholesale freeze – and in consultation with Congress.

“Instead, President Trump has needlessly jeopardized the health and safety of millions of people around the world, upended the lives of thousands of Americans who work to implement US assistance programs, wasted US taxpayer dollars, and put our national security interests at risk.”

Taylor Budowich, the White House deputy chief of staff, has accused the US news agency of “irresponsible and dishonest reporting” and barred it from the Oval Office and presidential plane indefinitely.

The move comes after AP – like many other news outlets – declined to begin referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

Trump signed an executive order changing the name of the body of water in federal proceedings, but the change has not been recognised beyond the US government.

In a post on X, Budowich said AP’s editorial decision showed a “commitment to misinformation”.

AP has pointed to its international reach in explaining its decision.

As a federal judge in Manhattan weighed whether to extend a temporary restraining order against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) today, protesters gathered outside to voice their displeasure with the Elon Musk-run advisory panel.

William Tong of Connecticut and Letitia James of New York — the attorneys general of their respective states — briefly spoke to the crowd, warning of presidential overreach on the part of Trump and Musk.

Tong also blasted comments from the Trump administration casting doubt on the legitimacy of the court rulings against the president’s policies.

“If they can’t say what the law is and they can’t stop them from taking an unconstitutional and illegal action, then what do we have?” Tong asked.

“We have unchecked power. If the president could do whatever he wants, then Congress becomes optional. It becomes marginal. Our rights become optional. States become optional. And all we’re left is with a president who can do whatever the heck he wants.”

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has announced that the on-scene portion of its investigation into a deadly aerial crash on January 29 has concluded.

The crash took place over the Potomac River on January 29, just nine days into Trump’s second term. A Black Hawk military helicopter crashed into a passenger jet, killing everyone on board both aircraft. There were three soldiers in the Black Hawk and 64 passengers in the jet.

In the hours afterwards, as recovery efforts continued, Trump said that it was “common sense” that diversity initiatives were partly to blame for the crash, though he offered no proof for his assertion.

But NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy indicated to reporters on Friday that bad data may have contributed to the Black Hawk’s flight pattern prior to the crash.

“We’re confident with the radio altitude — radio altitude — of the Black Hawk at the time of the collision that was 278 feet [85 metres]. But I want to caution: That does not mean that’s what the Black Hawk crew was seeing on the barometric altimeters in the cockpit,” Homendy said.

“We are seeing conflicting information in the data, which is why we aren’t releasing altitude for the Black Hawk’s entire route.”

The US senator says in a video that “at a time of massive income and wealth inequality” in the country, Trump and Republicans want to slash education, healthcare and housing.

“And you know what they want to do with those savings? We’re talking about trillions of dollars over a 10-year period. They want to provide gigantic tax breaks to Elon Musk and the billionaire class,” Sanders said.

The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York were a turning point for transgender visibility and acceptance in the US. After all, some of its most prominent leaders, including Sylvia Rivera, were transgender themselves.

So anger has erupted after the National Park Service removed references to “transgender” and “gender” from its website for the Stonewall National Monument, following an order from Trump.

Demonstrators have gathered outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village neighbourhood to protest the erasure, which they say is part of a series of actions under Trump to make transgender people less visible and less safe.

As Trump barrels forward with tariff threats against key trading partners Canada and Mexico, a renegotiation of the three countries’ trade agreement could be in the offing.

In his first term as president, Trump pushed to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with the current United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

Under Trump’s leadership, the US added a clause that requires a joint review of the pact within six years, a deadline that lands on July 1, 2026.

The agreement also includes a sunset clause to render the pact void by 2036 in the case of nonrenewal and a mandatory consultation with American stakeholders that is due to start in October.

While the USMCA does not include much detail on what that review would look like, it appears likely that Trump wants to rewrite the agreement entirely, said Vina Nadjibulla, vice president of research and strategy at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

Read more in our story here.

US District Judge Jeannette Vargas has said she would not yet rule on a request from 19 Democratic state attorneys general for a longer-lasting preliminary injunction on DOGE’s access to the systems.

Still, she left in place a temporary restraining order issued last week.

Democrats and state officials have warned that access to sensitive information at the Treasury Department by the Musk-run advisory panel could pose a threat both to US citizens and national security.

As we reported earlier, New York Attorney General Letitia James held a news conference today questioning why Musk needed access to the information.

She pointed to several legal challenges to other Trump administration actions that have been paused by courts, including Trump’s efforts to do away with birthright citizenship and cut funding to National Institute of Health research funding.

“So we’re going to march into court each and every time to uphold the law,” she said ahead of today’s hearing.

Brazil is the second-largest exporter of steel to the US after Canada, sending more than 4 million tonnes of the metal to the country in 2024.

“There is no doubt, there will be reciprocity,” Lula said in a radio interview about Trump’s plan to impose 25-percent tariffs on all US steel imports.

“If they tax Brazilian steel, we will react commercially or file a complaint with the World Trade Organization or tax the products we import from there,” the Brazilian president added.

“Trump can say what he wants, he’s the president of the United States. But he cannot do what he wants because if he does something that has an impact on other countries, there is always a reaction.”

For more on Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, and which countries would be most affected, check out our explainer here.

The meeting comes shortly after Vance condemned European countries for creating political “firewalls” to ostracise parties deemed too extremist.

It was an apparent reference to a policy by several German parties not to engage with the far-right anti-immigrant AfD.

Hours after delivering the address at the Munich Security Conference, Vance’s office confirmed he had met with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader and candidate for chancellor.

German officials have rejected Vance’s claim that they have stifled free speech and opposing voices in the country.

The news agency Reuters has reported that Emil Bove, the acting deputy US attorney general, has given federal prosecutors in New York an hour’s deadline to dismiss the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Veteran prosecutor Ed Sullivan agreed to file the motion to dismiss.

Anonymous sources told Reuters that Sullivan’s decision was intended to spare his colleagues from having to do something they considered unethical.

“This is not a capitulation. This is a coercion,” one person told Reuters. “That person, in my mind, is a hero.”

Bove, a former personal lawyer to Trump, has pressured district attorneys to drop the case against Adams, a centrist Democrat seen to be seeking a closer relationship with the US president.

In September, federal prosecutors announced corruption charges against Adams, including “bribery, campaign finance and conspiracy offences”. They offered the example of “straw donations” offered by Turkish officials so Adams would fast-track the opening of a new consulate.

Multiple prosecutors and senior Justice Department officials have resigned over the demand to drop the charges, saying there was no justification to end the case against Adams.

A group of Arab states at the UN says Gaza should become part of an independent Palestinian state in a rejection of recent calls by Trump for the US to take control of the enclave and force out its residents.

Trump has called for the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to allow the US to turn the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

“We, the Arab countries, want to see a Riviera – a Palestinian Gazan Riviera – in the independent and internationally recognised State of Palestine,” a representative said in a video shared by the State of Palestine on social media.

Rights advocates have denounced Trump’s proposal as amounting to ethnic cleansing.

Here are some of the key takeaways from what the US president has told reporters:

• The administration has approved the first exports of liquefied natural gas since they were paused last year under the Biden administration.
• Trump plans to impose tariffs on imported cars by April 2.
• Trump promises to take a hard stance on Hamas before Saturday’s prisoner-captive exchange, but it is unclear what that means exactly.
• Trump echoes his vice president in claiming there has been backsliding in freedom of speech in Europe.
• He says he plans to meet with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the coming weeks.

The pressure comes after the Republican leader won re-election on a promise to bring costs down for Americans.

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds explains what’s going on in the video below:

[There is] real concern: Is Ukraine going to have a proper role in this peace process? Are the European countries going to have a proper role?

Because certainly President Trump said the first stage [of his plan] is him meeting Russian President Putin.

There are people here who are comparing this with the peace talks on Afghanistan. Remember, the withdrawal of the US and NATO from Afghanistan was executed by President Biden, but all of the negotiations were done on the watch of Donald Trump.

Many believe that he gave up good cards in those negotiations and that already, this week, he’s given up some of his trump cards that he could have used in negotiations with President Putin.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says Trump’s re-election victory demonstrates that the American people “believe that government was too big”.

“Clearly it’s a new day,” she told reporters outside the White House.

Rollins said DOGE – the advisory office headed by Trump ally Elon Musk – was working at her agency and it had already cancelled some contracts and nearly 1,000 employee trainings related to diversity, equality and inclusion.

She added that she would welcome input from DOGE on the nation’s food stamp programme.

In a sharply worded letter, the lead prosecutor in a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has resigned after pressure from the Trump administration to drop the case.

“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me,” Hagan Scotten, an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, wrote.

Adams, a centrist Democrat, was indicted in September on charges including bribery and wire fraud.

But since Trump’s election in November, Adams has gotten closer to the Republican leader, even visiting his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in January.

Scotten wrote that the Trump administration’s pretext for dropping the case was “so weak as to be transparently pretextual”. He is the second high-profile prosecutor to resign over the Trump administration’s decision after Danielle Sassoon on Thursday.

“No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”