Protesters participated in another grassroots, widespread action against the Trump administration on Saturday.
Why it matters: The 50501 movement takes momentum from recent protests to encourage Americans to become each other's "social support web" as the administration's policies target marginalized communities.
The Trump administration's legal battles continued this week following the president's push to control Harvard University and deport hundreds of thousands of people living in the U.S., including a man mistakenly sent to El Salvador.
The Supreme Court, working after midnight, blocked the deportation of more detained Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, on Saturday.
The big picture: President Trump's administration is trying to deport the migrants held at Texas' Bluebonnet Detention Center in keeping with the president's campaign promise of mass deportations.
Stop trying to predict and appraise President Trump's tariffs policies based on economic theories or market realities. Tariffs are pure psychology for the president, fused into his brain like no other topic.
Why it matters: Trump's tariff brain is unpredictable to the outside (and to market analysts) but wholly knowable to those who know how his mind works.
A former U.S. attorney under former President Biden is running for mayor of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and seeking to oust a fellow Democrat in a city plagued by rising crime and a troubled police department, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: Alexander Uballez follows former U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland as the second former Biden official running for office in New Mexico, and may show how Democrats will campaign after 2024 losses.
Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, mistakenly deported from the U.S., was moved from CECOT to a detention center in Santa Ana, El Salvador, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said on Friday.
The big picture: Ábrego García said he was traumatized at the Salvadoran megaprison.
Another House Republican committee chair said Friday he will not grant Democrats' request to lead a congressional delegation to El Salvador to check on the status of deportees being held there.
Why it matters: Republicans sent their own official delegation to the country this week to visit the notorious maximum security prison housing deportees and express their support for President Trump's deportation policies.
David Hogg's organization gave $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee after angering House Democrats with plans to back primary challengers against their older incumbents, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The donation addresses one of the central complaints of Hogg's detractors, particularly battleground district Democrats — that his efforts will draw resources away from the fight to retake the House.
The Trump administration ousted Gary Shapley as acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, multipleoutlets reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources.
Why it matters: The interim position has had a revolving door as President Trump's pick awaits Senate confirmation.
The Trump administration recast the White House's COVID information website on Friday to declare a virus leaking from a Chinese labas the "true origins" of the pandemic.
Why it matters: President Trump has pushed the lab leak theory since 2020 when he downplayed masking, testing and other measures to prevent the spread of COVID during his first term while his approval rating cratered.
The Trump administration is expected to announce Friday that it would move forward with mass firings of more federal workers under the auspices of a new rule, previously known as "Schedule F."
Why it matters: The plan will allow Trump to gut civil service protections from a large swath of federal workers, paving the way to replace them with loyalists.
The Trump administration on Friday will announce that it's moving ahead with a new rule, previously known as "Schedule F," that will make it easier to remove federal employees it believes are undercutting President Trump's agenda.
Why it matters: By stripping civil service protections from about 50,000 people — roughly 2% of the federal work force — Trump is continuing his far-reaching effort to trim the federal bureaucracy and make it more answerable to him.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s vaccine skepticism may be the hallmark of his public persona, but his and his followers' questioning of the medical and pharmaceutical establishment goes much deeper.
Why it matters: In recent weeks, it's become pretty clear that Kennedy's views haven't changed all that much from his pre-HHS days. That could have implications that go far beyond vaccines and put him at even greater odds with the industries he's charged with regulating, let alone mainstream science.
If his past views hold up, antidepressants, ADHD medication and drugs that use mRNA technology — both those on the market and those under development — could end up as his next targets.
In fact, some of his words and actions since being nominated and confirmed as the nation's top health official suggest they're already on his list.
Driving the news: Kennedy may not have mentioned vaccines at Wednesday's press conference on autism, but that's where many people's minds went because of the way he's consistently linked the two.
He notably contradicted CDC researchers about why autism diagnoses are rising, pointing to what he called toxins in the environment, not better diagnostics (another familiar talking point).
He's also pledged to have results of a government-led effort to identify the cause of autism by September, a timeline that's stoked deep suspicion in the public health community about his commitment to scientific rigor or accurate conclusions.
And his recent remarks to FDA staff reinforcing his belief in the "deep state" caused enough alarm that Leerink Partners warned clients in an investor note that his agenda "is likely to negatively impact FDA's commitment to proven science and its retention of talent."
What they're saying: "He's still pressing his pseudoscience agenda, he still shows no interest in understanding the complexity of autism and how it operates through autism genes with environmental factors, he still talks in childlike terms about how to deal with autism," said professor and vaccine scientist Peter Hotez.
"Everything I've seen him say in public is as unhinged as it's ever been."
In light of Kennedy's recent comments, I spent part of the week reading a book recently published by the Children's Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group Kennedy founded, titled "The Medical-Pharmaceutical Killing Machine."
The book was published after Kennedy took leave from the organization, but the group remains aligned with his agenda and is a useful proxy when attempting to understand Kennedy's worldview.
"He's the same Bobby Kennedy, 100%," Mary Holland, CEO of Children's Health Defense, recently told Stat News.
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to a question about how closely the book does or doesn't reflect Kennedy's current views.
Reality check: For any of the book's major assertions to be true, there would have to be a massive coverup occurring at the highest levels of science, medicine and government (which is pretty much what the book says is happening).
Many of them are directly contradicted by established scientific evidence, and others defy logic.
There are mounting signs that Trump officials will face litigation over their decision to halt construction of Equinor's Empire Wind project off New York's coast.
Why it matters: The Interior Department's order is a major escalation of Trump 2.0's moves against offshore wind, which have already barred future leases and approvals.
A federal judge on Thursday issued new restrictions on Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, extending a ban on its access to Americans' personal data in Social Security Administration systems.
Why it matters: The Social Security database contains sensitive personal information about every American, and DOGE's claim it was rooting out fraud threatens to disrupt critical services for millions.
Democratic National Committee vice chair David Hogg's plan to spend $20 million to primary older Democratic incumbents in Congress has sparked intense anger from some lawmakers.
Why it matters: House Democrats told Axios that, while Hogg is not targeting battleground-district members, they believe he will divert attention and resources away from their races and the fight to retake the House.
In his first 100 days, President Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history.
Why it matters: Powers originally crafted to give the president flexibility in rare moments of crisis now form the backbone of Trump's agenda, enabling him to steamroll Congress and govern by unilateral decree through his first three months in office.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said Thursday he'll sue the Trump administration over the reported DOGE-driven dismantling of the AmeriCorps service program.
The big picture: This is Newsom's second lawsuit announcement against the administration this week after saying Wednesday that he'd sue over President Trump's sweeping global tariffs.
Former top Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot "was asked to resign," a Defense Department official said in an emailed statement on Thursday evening.
Friction point: Despite this announcement, Ullyot maintains he offered his resignation, telling Axios late Thursday that "DoD officials who hide behind anonymous statements clearly resent that they did not have the access or relationship to Secretary [Pete] Hegseth that I enjoyed under President Trump's leadership."
Why it matters: Van Hollen said he was twice denied requests to visit Ábrego García at the high-security Salvadoran prison for terrorists where the legal U.S. resident is being held as the Trump administration evades courts' orders to facilitate his release, despite conceding that he was deported in an "administrative error."
