USAID Ordered to Shred or Burn Classified Documents in Alarming Move

Staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has targeted to be shut down, were given an order Tuesday that seems to violate federal law.

The few USAID employees remaining after Trump’s mass firings were directed on Tuesday to shred and burn classified and personnel documents remaining at the office’s Washington, D.C., headquarters, Devex reports.

“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” read an email from Erica Y. Carr, the acting executive secretary of USAID, noting that this would be an “all day” event beginning Tuesday morning. USAID employees were ordered to label the burn bags with the word “SECRET” and “USAID/B/IO” with permanent markers.

The shredding reportedly began at 9:30 a.m. at USAID headquarters, and was a shock to the union representing foreign service employees at USAID, the American Foreign Service Association. A spokesperson for AFSA told Devex that the union was “alarmed by reports that USAID has directed the destruction of classified and sensitive documents that may be relevant to ongoing litigation regarding the termination of USAID employees and the cessation of USAID grants.”

The spokesperson added that there are “strict requirements for the retention of official records, particularly those that may be relevant to legal proceedings” under the Federal Records Act of 1950 and its resulting regulations.

“Furthermore, the unlawful destruction of federal records could carry serious legal consequences for anyone directed to act in violation of the law,” the spokesperson added.

Kel McClanahan, a national security attorney, told ProPublica that the shreddings were illegal under the Federal Records Act. McClanahan filed an “unauthorized disposition complaint” with the National Archives and asked them to “take immediate measures to stop this destruction of vast quantities of federal records.”

The Trump administration has thoroughly gutted USAID in its near-complete effort to destroy the agency, having canceled 83 percent of its programs as of Monday. These ideologically motivated cuts will have devastating, deadly impacts throughout the world, including a rise in multiple diseases and other health disasters. And now, in their misguided goal, they are breaking more laws.

JD Vance is desperate to shore up support among House Republicans for a spending bill that will keep the government open for the next seven months—and to do so, he revealed that Donald Trump doesn’t actually intend to allow them to spend all of the money Congress allocates.

During a meeting with House Republicans Tuesday, just hours ahead of the vote on the bill, Vance warned that Republicans would take the blame if the government had to shut down, according to three people in the room who spoke to Politico.

Vance tried to make a desperate plea for unity. “We already lost one vote, we can’t lose another,” he said.

The holdout Vance is referring to is Republican Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky.

Massie pledged Sunday that he wouldn’t support the continuing resolution. “Why would I vote to continue the waste fraud and abuse DOGE has found?” he wrote on X.

“We were told the CR in December would get us to March when we would fight. Here we are in March, punting again!” Massie added.

To be clear, the Department of Government Efficiency has yet to publish any actual evidence of fraud or abuse. Instead the group has claimed that they’ve canceled droves of government contracts—while a closer look reveals that many were already canceled or are worth a lot less than DOGE claims. But Massie’s conviction, even if mistaken, seems unshakeable. He was the only Republican who didn’t support a GOP budget resolution in February, which would necessitate massive cuts to social services, including the very popular Medicaid.

That bill had passed by a very slim margin of 217–215. Clearly, Vance is concerned about a repeat performance, this time with new defections. So, the vice president tried to meet concerns such as Massie’s by downplaying the actual utility of the government spending bill he hoped to rally Republicans behind.

Vance promised that Trump would “ensure allocations from Congress are not spent on things that harm the taxpayer,” according to Notus’s Reese Gorman.

Vance said Trump would do this under “Section II,” but it’s likely that he meant Article 2 of the Constitution, which the Trump administration has claimed gives the executive the power of impoundment, or a line-item veto of congressionally-appropriated spending.

But Vance’s promise is really a pipe dream: Congress legally retains power of the purse, granted by the Constitution, and the president’s purported powers are severely limited by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

If it seems a little outrageous that even with control of the House, Senate, and White House, the Republicans must openly admit that they are working to pass laws they have no intention of actually enforcing, that’s because it is. Rather than forge actual party unity behind his agenda, Trump wants the power to act unilaterally—leaving Vance to bully party members into saying “yes” to Trump doing whatever he wants when it comes to federal funding.

Health care professionals are torching Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s response to a slew of measles cases popping up across the country.

The health and human services secretary suggested Monday that a poor diet could have been behind the death of a West Texas child who contracted measles.

“It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person,” Kennedy told The New York Times, adding that there is “a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.”

Kennedy’s comment, however, belied the fact that the most vulnerable populations to die from measles are unvaccinated children.

“To be crystal clear: 1. Measles is a nasty disease,” an epidemiologist under the handle @HealthNerd posted on BlueSky. “2. You cannot treat measles with antibiotics or cod liver oil. 3. The measles vaccine is very safe and highly effective, as shown by the ELIMINATION OF THE DISEASE IN THE US FOR 25 YEARS. 4. RFK Jr. is an ignorant fool.”

So far, two individuals who contracted measles were reported to have died this year. Both of them were unvaccinated.

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie slammed Kennedy’s blasé attitude toward public health as “eugenicism.”

The highly contagious virus has no cure, so doctors say that the best way to remedy the disease is simply to get inoculated against it and never contract measles in the first place. But vaccination rates have dipped in several states due to conspiracy theories that vaccines are linked to autism.

In Gaines County—where the first victim lived—the measles vaccination rate among kindergartners is just 82 percent, reported The Atlantic. That’s far below the 95 percent threshold required to maintain herd immunity against pathogens.

And Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist himself—has so far refused to encourage the public to receive the jab.

In an interview with Fox News last week, Kennedy claimed that local Texas doctors were “getting very, very good results” by treating their measles patients with steroids and cod liver oil.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.

Only 14 Democratic representatives signed a letter calling for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine activist and green card holder disappeared by the Trump administration for his organizing at Columbia University.

“We are horrified by the recent illegal abduction and now indefinite detention of Mahmoud Khalil—a U.S. legal permanent resident—by Department of Homeland Security agents, and we unequivocally demand his immediate release from DHS custody,” the letter reads, addressed to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the letter continues. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing.... We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country.”

Representatives Rashida Tlaib, Mark Pocan, Nydia Velázquez, Delia Ramirez, lhan Omar, Jasmine Crockett, Summer Lee, Ayanna Pressley, Lateefah Simon, Al Green, Gwen Moore, André Carson, Nikema Williams, and James McGovern signed the letter.

The absence of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was noted given her previous criticism of Khalil’s arrest, as well as the fact that only 14 congressional Democrats felt compelled enough to publicly support Khalil.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has joined the attacks on Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestine Columbia University activist detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but can’t name any crimes allegedly committed by Khalil.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Johnson was directly asked what crimes Khalil committed to warrant his arrest, and gave a meandering answer calling the protest organizer a terrorist and attacking university officials for “refusing to take control” of the campus.

“If you are on a student visa and you’re an American, and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home. We’re gonna arrest your—tail, and we’re gonna send you home where you belong,” Johnson said.

There’s just one big problem with that explanation: Khalil doesn’t have a student visa, he has a green card. It’s telling that Johnson couldn’t name a law that was broken but gave a full-throated defense of ICE’s detention of Khalil and President Trump’s decision to target a legal permanent resident of the United States (with a pregnant, U.S. citizen wife) for deportation. It’s an attack on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the right to free speech.

Only a select few Democrats have come out to condemn Khalil’s detention, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some members of the House Progressive Caucus. Considering that Trump promises to conduct more arrests and further infringe on a basic American right, with the full support of his fellow Republicans, the entire Democratic Party should be sounding the alarm and pulling out all of the stops.

Just two weeks after insisting that Donald Trump’s budget resolution wouldn’t touch entitlement programs, Republicans have opted to completely give up the game on slashing Medicare and Medicaid.

In an interview with Fox News on Monday, Elon Musk used lies and deceit to try to convince the American public that they should hack the popular social programs—along with food stamps, Social Security, and unemployment—by hundreds of billions of dollars. By Tuesday, Republican lawmakers had already fallen in line.

“If he moves to largely eliminate entitlement programs, are you OK with it?” pressed CNN’s Kate Bolduan.

“I think when he talks about elimination, we’re talking about waste, abuse, and fraud, and it is true that the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up about 75 percent of our budget. It’s mandatory spending,” Missouri Representative Mark Alford said. “We’ve got to find the savings there. We will do that.”

“The budget director was speaking to our whip team last night in a meeting, and he pointed out that there are savings to be made in the Medicaid program,” Alford added.

But Alford’s fealty to the Trump administration might come at the cost of his reelection, as even his own supporters have expressed their malcontent with the destructive White House agenda.

Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall last month after he expressed support for Musk’s sweeping federal layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Alford seemed to take a page out of Trump’s own playbook in the immediate aftermath, refusing to chalk up the local frustration to his own inaction. In an interview with CNN, Alford referred to his own constituents as “outside agitators.”

The House GOP passed a budget resolution in late February that would gut major social services, including Medicaid, which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans. The $880 billion cut is a trade-off for conservatives whom Trump tasked to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

The party practically lied about the contents of the resolution, misdirecting Americans into believing that the bill did not task the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find, at minimum, $880 billion in savings from programs that fall under its jurisdiction, a seismic order that left the committee with practically no other option than to cut away at Medicaid.

In the days immediately following the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson “ruled out” the largest cuts to the health insurance program, though he failed to offer any specifics as to how his party would make them without affecting Americans’ benefits.

Conservatives are teeing up a vote on the budget measure this week, though they can only spare one party vote without bipartisan support. Johnson has effectively dared Democrats to oppose the effort, hurtling the government toward a potential shutdown come Friday.

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would double his disastrous tariffs on Canada, dragging the United States further into a trade war as its stock market continues to fall.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social, the president wrote that his 25 percent tariffs on aluminum and steel coming into the U.S. would now be doubled to 50 percent, and go into effect as soon as Wednesday.

Trump’s newest round of tariffs came in response to Ontario—which is the main provider of electricity to Minnesota, New York, and Michigan—slapping a reciprocal 25 percent tariff on electricity imported to the U.S.

Those tariffs went into effect Monday, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would “not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely.” Trump’s tariff war now threatens the livelihoods of the American citizens living in those states. But don’t worry, Trump wrote that he intends to announce a “National Emergency on Electricity within the threatened area.”

Trump also demanded that Canada remove its steep tariffs on U.S. dairy products—conveniently forgetting to mention that those tariffs only apply after the U.S. has made a Trump-negotiated quantity of tariff-free dairy sales to Canada.

If Canada failed to lower “other egregious, long time Tariffs,” Trump threatened to raise tariffs on imported cars from Canada into the U.S. on April 2, to “essentially, permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada.”

“Those cars can easily be made in the USA!” Trump claimed.

Despite his specific demands, Trump revealed that in the end, the only thing that would satisfy his destructive tendencies would be total submission.

“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State,” Trump wrote. “This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

The president continued to wax poetic about the outlandish imperialist dream he intends to manifest through economic pressure.

“Canadians’ taxes will be very substantially reduced, they will be more secure, militarily and otherwise, than ever before, there would no longer be a Northern Border problem, and the greatest and most powerful nation in the World will be bigger, better and stronger than ever—And Canada will be a big part of that,” he said.

Trump claimed that getting rid of the “artificial line of separation” would create the “safest and most beautiful Nation anywhere in the World.”

Trump’s announcement comes as the U.S. stock market enters another rough week, after a major sell-off last week that caused Trump to roll back some of his tariffs and then immediately threaten more the next day. Trump’s tariff whiplash has resulted in a roiling stock market that even Fox News is having trouble defending. What’s more, it seems to have taken a sizeable bite out of Elon Musk’s net worth, and sent Tesla stock tumbling.

President Trump’s spite for our neighbors is driving the economy to the edge of recession.

The stock market plummeted after Trump announced Tuesday the doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, from 25 percent to 50 percent, with more on the way very soon.

“Based on Ontario, Canada, placing a 25% Tariff on ‘Electricity’ coming into the United States, I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. This will go into effect TOMORROW MORNING, March 12th,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.”

These actions have led to intense uncertainty. Monday was the worst day for Nasdaq in over two years, and on Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 1 percent.

Trump has tried to get out in front of this by using language intended to ease people into the fact that the stock market (and the economy) is going to look absolutely horrendous for a very long time.

“I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America, that’s a big thing. And there are always periods of.… It takes a little time, it takes a little time. But I think it should be great for us,” he said on Sunday when asked if he was expecting a recession this year. “Look, what I have to do is build a strong country. You can’t really watch the stock market.”

On Truth Social, Trump again stated that the only way for this tariff war to end would be for Canada to somehow become the fifty-first state.

“We are subsidizing Canada to the tune of more than 200 Billion Dollars a year. WHY??? This cannot continue. The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear.”

Trump has also placed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and 10 percent tariffs on goods from China.

Democrats are losing trust in battleground districts and struggling to connect with independent voters.

That is what new internal polling conducted by the Democratic group Navigator Research says about the party, which doesn’t bode well for next year’s midterm elections. In contested House districts, most voters believe that Democrats in Congress are “more focused on helping other people than people like me.”

Only 27 percent of independent voters in such districts believe that Democrats are focused on helping them, versus 55 percent who say they focus on others. The full findings of the poll, one of the first of battleground congressional districts since November, will be presented to House Democrats and their staff on Wednesday at their Issues Conference in Leesburg, Virginia.

The conference is supposed to help coordinate House Democrats’ messaging heading into the 2026 midterm elections, and if the results are any indication, the party needs to figure things out—and fast.

“The Democratic brand is still not where it needs to be in terms of core trust and understanding people’s challenges,” said Molly Murphy, one of the pollsters. “Even though voters are critical about Trump and some of the things he’s doing, that criticism of Trump doesn’t translate into trust in Democrats. The trust has to be earned.”

One major area that Democrats lack trust is regarding jobs and work. Only 44 percent of polled voters think that Democrats respect work, while just 39 percent think that Democrats value work. A majority of voters, 56 percent to be exact, say that they don’t believe Democrats are looking out for working people, while just 42 percent think that Democrats share their values. And only 39 percent of voters think Democrats have the right priorities.

The party has an uphill battle over the next year, as 69 percent of voters said Democrats were “too focused on being politically correct” and 51 percent said “elitist” was a good descriptor for Democrats. The party has to put together a coherent message that can reach the working people necessary to regain control of Congress, all the more necessary with the damage Donald Trump is doing to the economy and the federal government.

The question is whether the party can come up with an effective strategy that fires up the base and brings in new voters instead of weak stunts and the out-of-touch strategies touted by centrist groups like Third Way. If they don’t, not only will they lose again, but Trump and the GOP will continue to run roughshod over the country.

Donald Trump’s 2025 inaugural entourage was noticeably flush, with several of the world’s richest people—including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Bernard Arnault, and Jeff Bezos—standing behind the president as he was sworn in.

But seven weeks later, that cohort has lost a significant sum of cash, with the five billionaires’ collective net worths tanking by a staggering $209 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Any momentary market gains boosted by Trump’s return to the Oval Office have since vanished. The S&P 500 has lost 6.4 percent since the inauguration, largely thanks to Trump’s whiplash tariff proposals and a mass layoff sweeping the federal government under Musk’s direction.

Musk’s losses stem from a downturn on Tesla, which historically attracted a more liberal consumer base with its electric vehicles. That same base has since soured on the tech billionaire and his products, especially in some of Europe’s stronger economies, such as Germany, which has seen sales in the country fall by more than 70 percent over the last two months, reported Bloomberg. Sales in China—where Tesla has two major factories—have similarly plummeted, falling by 49 percent in February.

Bezos’s financial woes follow his decisions to support Trump’s inauguration fund in December and his increasingly tight grip on The Washington Post, which he announced would now prioritize personal liberties and free markets in its Opinions section. Amazon shares have fallen 14 percent since January 17, according to Bloomberg, which noted that Bezos dined with the president as recently as last month.

On Monday, Trump floated that the “little disruption” caused by his aggressive trade policies could go on for quite a bit longer, urging Americans to come up with a totally new calendar to measure how long they’ll be affected.

“Look, what I have to do is build a strong country,” the president told Fox Business, responding to criticism about the recent stock market drop. “You can’t really watch the stock market. If you look at China, they have a 100-year perspective. We have a quarter. We go by quarters. And you can’t go by that.”

Trump is scheduled to address U.S. business leaders Tuesday at a Business Roundtable meeting at 5 p.m.