President Trump has expanded his crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, revoking a 60-year-old executive order, signed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, banning hiring discrimination by federal contractors.

On Wednesday, the Trump administration also ordered federal employees to report on their colleagues who refuse to comply with orders to purge DEI initiatives, threatening “adverse consequences” for employees who fail to report their co-workers. This comes a day after the Trump administration placed employees in any federal DEI offices on immediate administrative leave.

The Justice Department has ordered a freeze on all new cases in its Civil Rights Division. Ongoing cases, including police reform agreements in major cities, will be subject to the discretion of judges. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law called it an “unprecedented” move that “should make Americans both angry and deeply worried.”

Separately, the Justice Department has ordered federal officials to prosecute state and local officials who resist the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations.

In related news, the ACLU is suing the Trump administration on behalf of Make the Road New York over its plan to expand fast-track deportations while denying due legal process. The expedited deportation policy targets immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. continuously for at least two years.

In more immigration news, both houses of Congress have now passed the final version of the Laken Riley Act, which requires federal immigration authorities to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for certain nonviolent crimes. The bill now goes to the White House, where it’s set to be signed as Trump’s first law.

This comes as the Pentagon says it will deploy another 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

President Trump has signed executive orders rolling back federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act and threatening the healthcare of tens of millions of people. One order reverses Biden-era efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare and Medicaid recipients. Another order shortens the open enrollment period to purchase health insurance. Yet another executive order rolls back a Biden-era program that made more parents with young children eligible for Medicaid. Trump is also phasing out a program that lowered the cost of health insurance premiums for lower-income families.

Meanwhile, Trump has canceled scientific gatherings and panels across federal health agencies and directed all employees at the Health and Human Services Department to halt external communications, including public health advice on diseases like COVID-19, influenza and norovirus.

In more related news, a government website set up in 2022 offering information on abortion access and rights has been taken offline. ReproductiveRights.gov has gone dark since at least Monday, the day of Trump’s inauguration.

On Wednesday, Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee grilled Budget Office nominee Russell Vought on Trump’s plans to cut Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance in order to offer more tax cuts to the wealthy. In a tense exchange with Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, Vought touted welfare work requirement policies and the Republican-backed Clinton-era welfare reform that ended up doubling extreme poverty and depriving those most in need of essential government support.

Russell Vought: “It led to caseload reductions, people getting off of welfare, going back into the workforce. And we think that that — that type of thinking should be applied to other federal programs. And it’s informed not only Medicaid, but other programs, to be able to encourage people to get back into the workforce, increase labor force participation and give people again the dignity of work.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley: “And you believe cutting off healthcare encourages people to work when they need to get better health in order to work? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Russell Vought: “Again, Senator” —

Sen. Jeff Merkley: “And it’s been a failed experiment.”

Russell Vought co-authored the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a far-right blueprint to radically reshape federal agencies.

Donald Trump has named former fast-food CEO and failed 2017 labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder to be ambassador to the European Union. Puzder was forced to withdraw from consideration as labor secretary in Trump’s first Cabinet amid allegations of domestic violence and reports of widespread sexual harassment and labor and safety violations at his chain restaurants Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Humanitarian aid groups in Gaza report more than 3,200 aid trucks have entered the Palestinian territory in the first four days since the ceasefire agreement took effect. Civil defense workers have recovered the bodies of 162 people trapped under the rubble of destroyed homes and businesses and are working to uncover thousands more. Palestinian officials report Israel dropped around 100,000 metric tons of explosives on Gaza during its 15-month assault, destroying 88% of Gaza’s infrastructure.

About 20,000 children became orphans, losing one or both parents. More than 40% of families in Gaza are taking care of children who are not their own. On Wednesday, displaced Palestinian families returned to Gaza City, many for the first time in months, to find a ruined wasteland.

Safaa Dahdouh: “Our families will return from the south to their blessed land of Gaza City. However, they will not find their homes, as they were destroyed by the Zionist occupation. They will find tents that we set up to meet their simplest needs. These tents will welcome the displaced families, hoping to heal some of their pain after seeing their destroyed homes that have now turned into rubble, which used to be filled with families.”

In the occupied West Bank, residents of the Jenin refugee camp are reporting constant gunfire and explosions as Israel’s deadly raid entered its third day. Doctors and eyewitnesses say Israeli soldiers are besieging two hospitals, with medical teams coming under fire and ambulance crews barred from reaching the dead and wounded. Some 600 medical workers and patients are sheltering inside Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman governmental hospital with dwindling supplies of food and water. The hospital’s director reports three doctors and two nurses were shot on the road leading to the hospital this week.
Elsewhere, two Palestinians were killed during an Israeli raid on the town of Burqin, outside Jenin. Residents say Israeli troops have begun forcing families to leave their homes as part of a campaign to break Palestinian resistance.

Adel Besher: “What they failed to achieve in Gaza, they are trying to make up for it here in Jenin — not only in Jenin. Jenin is the center of resistance and fighting. If they finish the resistance in Jenin, they will finish it in all of the West Bank.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday the West Bank military operation, dubbed “Iron Wall,” represents “a shift in security strategy” that took lessons from the Gaza campaign.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned that Israeli leaders have turned their attention from Gaza to the West Bank, hoping to annex the territory once and for all. Guterres spoke Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Secretary-General António Guterres: “Israel, feeling emboldened by the military successes that it has had, to think that this is the moment to do the annexation of the West Bank and to keep the Gaza in a kind of a limbo situation with an unclear — unclear form of governance. It is clear for me that Israel is not fundamentally interested in Gaza. It’s fundamentally interested in the West Bank.”

President Trump has redesignated Yemen’s Houthi movement as a terrorist organization. The move reverses Biden’s removal of the terrorist label in February 2021 and reinstates the label first imposed by Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as the first Trump administration was preparing to leave office. Houthi fighters have attacked cargo ships in the Red Sea and fired projectiles at Israel amid Israel’s war on Gaza. As in 2021, aid groups warn the U.S. terrorist designation could increase the humanitarian crises of hunger and illness in Yemen.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands more people have been displaced in recent days after M23 rebels seized the key eastern town of Minova, a main supply route for Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Marceline Kacharanga: “I lived in Minova. When we were told the enemies were approaching, my sister and I fled to Nzulo on foot last Friday. Now the enemy is in Bugulube, and we are fleeing without knowing where we are going, as if we have nowhere to return. Look, my older sister gave birth yesterday. She has a baby, and we don’t know what to do.”

Aid groups are warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis in eastern Congo as intensified fighting has displaced nearly a quarter of a million people since just the start of the year — half of them children.

Belgium appointed a judge this week to investigate a criminal complaint brought last month by the DRC against Apple in France and Belgium, accusing the tech giant of using conflict minerals in their supply chains. Over 200 armed groups, including the Rwanda-backed M23, have been engaged in a protracted violent conflict for control over mines where minerals including tin, tungsten and tantalum are extracted.

In Southern California, another 31,000 people have received mandatory evacuation orders as a new wildfire north of Los Angeles broke out and quickly scorched through 10,000 acres Wednesday. Rights groups are urging authorities to completely evacuate the Pitchess Detention Center, which houses some 4,700 prisoners and is in the evacuation zone for the Hughes fire.

Meanwhile, health experts are warning Angelenos who lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires to use extra precautions if returning to retrieve personal items amid the rubble, as toxic chemicals including lead, asbestos and arsenic are likely present in the ashes. Air quality data shows atmospheric concentrations of lead, which is a neurotoxin, hit 100 times average levels in Los Angeles during the worst of the wildfires.

In the Netherlands, climate activists with Greenpeace celebrated Wednesday after a judge ordered the Dutch government to dramatically cut nitrogen emissions by 2030. Greenpeace successfully argued the Dutch government failed to uphold European regulations limiting nitrogen oxide emissions due to farms, fertilizer and automobiles.

Hilde Anna de Vries: “It’s definitely a victory, after decades of inaction. I think this verdict really shows that the plans of previous cabinets are not adequate, and now they actually have to come up with a plan. And I think that’s very necessary given the current state of nature.”

The move is expected to face intense backlash from right-wing parties that form the Netherlands’ current ruling coalition, and farmers who fear having to reduce their livestock.