Federal courts have ordered a pause to much of President Trump’s agenda in a trio of rulings involving refugees, federal spending and foreign aid. In the first ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington, D.C., ordered the White House to pause its spending freeze on grants, loans and other financial aid. In a second ruling, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead in Seattle blocked Trump’s executive order suspending refugee admissions and funding. And in a third case, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington, D.C., ordered the Trump administration to comply with his order from two weeks ago to unfreeze billions of dollars for foreign assistance grants and contracts.

U.S. federal workers face fresh uncertainty after billionaire Elon Musk gave them a second chance to respond to his order that they justify their jobs or risk termination. Musk’s latest directive came in a post on his social media site X late Monday; it contradicted guidance from the Office of Personnel Management telling workers they could ignore Musk’s earlier email ordering them to summarize their accomplishments or risk losing their jobs. On Tuesday, Trump added to the chaos and uncertainty with these comments. 

President Donald Trump: “Well, it’s somewhat voluntary, but it’s also, if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired.”

On Tuesday, DOGE quietly dropped false claims from its website about what it called its five biggest savings to U.S. taxpayers. The reversals included DOGE’s claim of $8 billion in cuts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the figure was in fact, $8 million. 

Elon Musk will join President Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, scheduled for today — even though Musk was not confirmed by the Senate to a Cabinet post and is listed by the White House as a “special government employee.” The White House said Tuesday Musk is not the head of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency; instead, the White House said DOGE’s interim administrator is Amy Gleason, who worked at the U.S. Digital Service during Trump’s first term before Musk rebranded it. The New York Times reports Gleason is on vacation in Mexico and was not aware that the White House planned to make her role public now.

Meanwhile, 21 DOGE staffers have quit in protest of Musk’s actions, writing in a joint resignation letter, “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services.”

The Republican-led House of Representatives has narrowly approved a budget framework for much of President Trump’s agenda, proposing $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and a $2 trillion reduction in federal spending over the next decade. Among other provisions, the budget would likely slash about $800 billion over a decade from Medicaid, threatening healthcare coverage to more than 72 million people. All 215 House Democrats voted against the budget. On Tuesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus launched a campaign for an alternative budget — the “Tax the Greedy Billionaires” coalition.

Ukrainian officials say at least seven people were killed overnight as Russia launched a wave of deadly drone attacks on the capital Kyiv and parts of eastern Ukraine. Separately, Russia said it shot down scores of Ukrainian drones launched into the Russian-annexed region of Crimea. The fighting came as the White House hinted that Ukraine was prepared to sign a deal granting the U.S. access to Ukrainian resources, including oil, gas and rare earth minerals. Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would visit the White House on Friday to sign the agreement. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says a delegation of U.S. diplomats will meet their Russian counterparts in Istanbul on Thursday to restore diplomatic ties, after the U.S. and Russia withdrew embassy staff at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

Israel and Hamas have reached a deal on the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, in exchange for the bodies of four Israeli hostages who died in Gaza. The swap will take place Thursday, after Israel delayed the release of hundreds of Palestinians in a move Hamas officials said was another attempt to sabotage the Gaza ceasefire. This comes as the United Nations is urging Israel to allow mobile homes and shelters into Gaza after six Palestinian infants died from hypothermia due to the freezing cold. Meanwhile, schoolchildren have joyfully returned to classrooms in Gaza for the first time since October 2023. 

Latifa Mahmoud Hasan Abu Sherbin: “After an absence of about a year and a half, we returned to school. The feeling is indescribable. Honestly, it’s a unique and special feeling. However, there is a slight flaw: It’s not really a school. First of all, the walls are destroyed. There are no benches, no blackboards. We even brought our prayer mats with us to sit on, and they were barely enough. There are no teaching materials available to help us study. Despite all of this, we overcame these conditions.”

Nearly all of Gaza’s schools have been destroyed by Israel.

In Syria, at least two people are dead after Israel’s military launched air raids on the capital and parts of southern Syria. On Tuesday, low-flying Israeli warplanes rattled residents of Damascus before dropping bombs on the nearby town of Kiswe. Separately, Israel bombed sites in the southern province of Daraa. Israel’s military later said it had struck military command centers and “multiple sites containing weapons.” The attacks came just hours after Syria’s transitional government demanded that Israel withdraw from Syrian territory it has occupied since rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad in December.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Tuesday in a push to end violence that’s seen Rwanda-backed M23 rebels overrun cities in the eastern DRC, killing more than 7,000 people while displacing hundreds of thousands. Speaking to reporters in the capital Kinshasa, Khan laid out his goals for the visit. 

Karim Khan: “To try to make sure there is a consistent, there is a comprehensive, there is a sustainable and holistic approach to justice, that draws the poison of criminality away from the soil and allows the people and your children to march forward to, God willing, a brighter future, after these very dark days that you’re going through right now.”

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom announced a pause on some bilateral aid to Rwanda and other diplomatic sanctions over Kigali’s role in supporting M23.

The Trump administration has announced a new visa ban targeting Cuban officials who are tied to a decades-old program that primarily sends Cuban doctors and healthcare workers to assist other countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio erroneously described the program as “forced labor.” Cuba began deploying doctors around the world after the 1959 Cuban Revolution to disaster sites and during disease outbreaks, such as at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez slammed the restrictions as part of Rubio’s “personal agenda.” Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants and has persistently advocated for harsher sanctions on Cuba despite the catastrophic impacts.

The White House has announced plans to hand-pick the pool reporters who will be allowed to ask President Trump questions, breaking from decades of precedent that saw the White House Correspondents’ Association determine which journalists have close access to the president. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the changes on Tuesday.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: “A select group of D.C.-based journalists should no longer have a monopoly over the privilege of press access at the White House. All journalists, outlets and voices deserve a seat at this highly coveted table. So, by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people.”

The White House Correspondents’ Association condemned the changes, writing, “This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.” 

On Monday, a federal judge denied a request from the Associated Press for a temporary restraining order, after the Trump administration cut off AP’s access to cover major events at the White House unless it agrees to follow Trump’s order that it refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to force millions of undocumented people to “register” with the federal government or face criminal prosecution. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threatened undocumented immigrants with being “hunted down and deported” if they failed to register, fulfilling another one of Trump’s executive orders signed on his first day in office. This comes as a group of elite military contractors, including former CEO and founder of the for-profit mercenary company Blackwater, Erik Prince, has offered to set up so-called processing camps on military bases and to deploy an “army” of private citizens to arrest immigrants. The blueprint has an estimated cost of $25 billion and would certainly face legal and operational challenges. Prince is the brother of former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. 

In Tennessee, Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would prohibit undocumented immigrants from pursuing most lawsuits, such as suing for medical malpractice. This is Nashville civil rights attorney Chris Smith.

Chris Smith: “It deprives undocumented immigrants of the right to bring a declaratory judgment action. That’s the vehicle under Tennessee law where you can challenge the constitutionality of a statute. So, by saying you can’t even file lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality, it’s a complete stripping of rights of undocumented people.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a new trial for Richard Glossip, who has been on Oklahoma’s death row for nearly three decades. Glossip has for years maintained his innocence after being convicted as the mastermind behind the 1997 murder-for-hire of his former employer. We’ll have more on this story later in the broadcast with Glossip’s spiritual adviser, anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean.

In a victory for labor rights, the food delivery app DoorDash has been ordered to pay nearly $17 million for secretly using customer tips to subsidize the wages of its delivery workers in New York, instead of allowing them to keep their tips on top of their guaranteed wages. The payout will go toward thousands of DoorDash workers, most of whom are immigrants, who made deliveries between May 2017 and September 2019. In a statement, Gustavo Ajche, a leader with the group Los Deliveristas Unidos, said on X, “I am proud of our fight and recovering this money that belongs to the workers is a great victory. Personally, I am always grateful to the thousands of New Yorkers for their [generosity], but we are always on the sidelines of someone who wants to take advantage of us, but we are here to fight for justice and dignity. si se puede !!!!”