US politics briefing: Trump rails against Zelenskyy and derails Senate Republicans’ budget proposal
From the Trump administration’s latest moves to Donald Trump’s latest feuds – key US politics stories from Wednesday at a glance
The Guardian is tracking Donald Trump and his administration’s latest moves with several stories, features and analyses each day. Here are some of the biggest stories in US politics that happened Wednesday, 19 February.
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Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative, a global finance conference in Miami organized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Trump said the United States is “back and open for business” and that the “dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization … and total incompetence will be gone for ever.”
Illinois governor JB Pritzker delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
In a blistering statement after asking a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams, the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove invited justice department officials and prosecutors who disagreed with the decision to quit.
The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as Thursday, kicking off mass layoffs just as tax season begins. Further reductions in the size of the agency are expected.
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