Donald Trump has sued the US Treasury and Internal Revenue Service for $10bn over an unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns during his first term, Bloomberg News reports.
Trump famously broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then attaining, the presidency. Ahead of the 2020 election, the New York Times published a report based on data leaked by a former IRS contractor.
The IRS and Treasury “had a duty to safeguard and protect plaintiffs’ confidential tax returns and related tax return information from such unauthorized inspection and public disclosure,” Trump’s lawsuit reads.
Trump has filed a number of lawsuits since returning to the presidency, seeking damages totaling more than $50bn, Bloomberg reports.
Here’s our past coverage of the details of Trump’s tax returns that were made public in 2022:
Key events
House speaker Mike Johnson says the government could be headed to a “short shutdown situation” because the earliest the House will take floor action on funding bills could be Monday.
“We want to get the government funded, as does the president, so respect whatever he was able to negotiate there, and we’ll deal with it,” Johnson told reporters at the premiere of First Lady Melania Trump’s documentary at the Kennedy Center.
The Senate is expected to vote on a funding deal, reached earlier today, tonight. The House of Representatives requires that the text of bills be available 72 hours before a vote, Johnson said.
Without a funding package, the government will partially shut down at 12:01 am on Saturday.
At the premiere of his wife Melania’s documentary at the Kennedy Center today, Donald Trump told reporters he hopes to speak to Iranian leadership.
“We have a lot of very big, very powerful ships sailing to Iran right now, and it would be great if we didn’t have to use them,” he said.
Donald Trump will announce his choice to replace Jerome Powell as head the Federal Reserve tomorrow, he just told reporters. Powell’s term as chair of the reserve ends in May.
On his way in to watch a screening of a new documentary about his wife, in what the White House now calls the Trump Kennedy Center, the president said: “I’ll be naming the Fed tomorrow morning. I’ve chosen a very good person to head the Fed. I’ll be putting that out tomorrow morning.”
Trump has long feuded with Powell over interest rates. As my colleague Lauren Aratani reported yesterday: “The Trump administration has put unprecedented pressure on the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, to cut rates, with Donald Trump launching personal attacks on Powell and the justice department opening a criminal investigation into his handling of the refurbishment of the central bank’s offices.”
Donald Trump has sued the US Treasury and Internal Revenue Service for $10bn over an unauthorized disclosure of his tax returns during his first term, Bloomberg News reports.
Trump famously broke precedent by not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then attaining, the presidency. Ahead of the 2020 election, the New York Times published a report based on data leaked by a former IRS contractor.
The IRS and Treasury “had a duty to safeguard and protect plaintiffs’ confidential tax returns and related tax return information from such unauthorized inspection and public disclosure,” Trump’s lawsuit reads.
Trump has filed a number of lawsuits since returning to the presidency, seeking damages totaling more than $50bn, Bloomberg reports.
Here’s our past coverage of the details of Trump’s tax returns that were made public in 2022:
As news of a government funding deal emerges, progressive organizations including MoveOn Civic Action are denouncing a “weak” deal with “zero ICE accountability”.
“Leader Schumer should ask the Minnesotans who are watching their neighbors get killed in cold blood if a deal with no plan to stop ICE is enough right now,” said MoveOn Civic Action spokesperson Britt Jacovich.
Donald Trump threatened Canada with 50% tariffs on “any and all Aircraft” it sells in the United States, citing the country’s decision not to certify Gulfstream jets made in the United States.
“We are hereby decertifying their Bombardier Global Expresses, and all Aircraft made in Canada, until such time as Gulfstream, a Great American Company, is fully certified,” the president wrote on his social media platform. He added that he would levy the tariff if “this situation is not immediately corrected”.
Trump has repeatedly threatened the United States’s northern neighbor with tariffs, including most recently if Canada made a deal with China:
The United States Treasury will allow US entities to engage in Venzuela’s oil industry under a new license announced today. The license specifically prohibits entities from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or Cuba from the transactions.
The news comes as Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez signed a law today to open the country’s oil sector to privatization.
Donald Trump has signed an executive order imposing tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba, according to the White House.
Democrats and White House reach deal to avoid government shutdown
Democrats and the White House have reached a deal to avoid a government shutdown, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s office has confirmed to the Guardian.
The deal will advance a package of spending bills, while separating a Department of Homeland Security spending bill from the package. The agreement will include funding for DHS for two weeks at current levels, while Democrats continue negotiating further guardrails on immigration agents in light of the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis.
Donald Trump signs executive order to create initiative focused on addiction treatment
Donald Trump signed an executive order today to create a “White House Great American Recovery Initiative” focused on addiction treatment.
At an Oval Office sigining ceremony, the president appeared alongside health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr and Kathryn Burgum, who is married to interior secretary Doug Burgum. The pair will be co-chairing the initiative.
Both Kennedy and Burgum have lived experience with addiction.
Kennedy, who has been open about his past struggle with heroin addiction, emphasized that it’s “not a moral failure, it’s a disease.”
In her remarks, Kathryn Burgum talked about being reliant on alcohol for 20 years and being in recovery for more than 23. “Addiction is not a moral failure. It is not a character flaw. And it’s not simply a behavioral issue. Addiction is a lifelong, chronic, relapsing medical disease as real as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. And when we fail to treat it as such, we don’t treat the disease,” she said.
House speaker Mike Johnson called last week’s shooting of Alex Pretti “deeply concerning” in his first remarks about the death of the 37-year-old ICU nurse in Minneapolis.
Johnson told reporters that an investigation is necessary, while also criticizing state and local officials. “We need them to cooperate with federal officials,” he said.
Josh Shapiro says Pennsylvania is preparing to respond if federal agents begin an immigration operation there as they have in Minnesota and other states.
Speaking in conversation with The Christian Science Monitor at an event in Washington DC, Shapiro declined to share specifics but said, “we have ratcheted up our preparation should this come, and that is going to involve not just law enforcement response but working closely with the community.”
“If the president of the United States seeks to impose his will and the federal will on the commonwealth, there may be some things we can’t stop,” he said, but added that his government is “prepared on every level”.
Lauren Gambino
Asked about Trump’s threats to investigate California for fraud, Newsom ran through a litany of efforts the state had taken to reduce abuses of federal and state benefit programs. While he insisted that fraud was a real problem and efforts to address it should be taken seriously, Newsom pushed back, asking the moderator if he was aware of a multi-billion dollar healthcare fraud scheme in Texas.
He suggested that because it took place in a red state that voted overwhelmingly for Trump, the federal government wasn’t interested in the case.
“This is not about fraud and abuse,” Newsom said. “This is about politicalization, weaponization.”
Lauren Gambino
As he has before, Newsom argued that Trump was laying the groundwork to contest the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections in anticipation of steep Republican losses that could imperil the second-half of his presidency.
“What more evidence do we need on a day-to-day basis,” Newsom asked. On Wednesday, the FBI executed a search warrant at the elections warehouse of a Georgia county at the heart of Trump’s baseless stolen-election lie, Newsom noted. “All of this is part of that same narrative, that same threat.”
Gavin Newsom says he has little faith that ‘border czar’ Tom Homan will de-escalate immigration crackdown in Minneapolis
Lauren Gambino
Governor Gavin Newsom said he had little faith that Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, would de-escalate the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, warning darkly: “These guys are not screwing around.”
Speaking in San Francisco at an event hosted by Bloomberg News, Newsom recalled that the Trump administration closed an investigation into Homan, who was accused of accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents.
“If Tom Holman – who was accused of a $50,000 bribe where charges disappeared … – is the adult in the room, we are more trouble than any of you think,” Newsom said.
The governor added: “None of this can be normalized, and none of this, none of these can be considered credible in the context of any of this renewed posture of the administration.”
Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 37%, down three percentage points from the fall, according to a new Pew poll.
The poll showed the greatest changes among Republicans. The percentage of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believed Trump acts ethically in office had fallen from 55% at the start of the president’s second term, to just 42% in January 2026. Meanwhile, the percentage who believed the president had the mental fitness to do the job had fallen from three-quarters to two-thirds of Republicans.
Pew also asked Americans about their opinions regarding Trump’s immigration policies. It found that 74% of Americans believe it is acceptable for ordinary people to record video of immigration arrests. A majority (59%) also believe it is acceptable for people to share information about where enforcement actions are happening.
Top Democrats on Senate and House national intelligence committees question why Tulsi Gabbard appeared at FBI search of Georgia election office
The top Democrats on Senate and House national intelligence committees are questioning why Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, appeared at an FBI search of a Georgia election office this week.
Gabbard was present yesterday when the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant in Fulton county, Georgia for documents related to the 2020 election, which Donald Trump has falsely claimed he won.
In a letter to Gabbard, senator Mark Warner and congressman Jim Hines wrote, “The Intelligence Community should be focused on foreign threats and, as you yourself have testified, when those intelligence authorities are turned inwards the results can be devastating for Americans privacy and civil liberties.”
Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced today that she plans to file legislation that would bar federal immigration officers from schools, courthouses, hospitals and churches and make it illegal for another state to deploy its National Guard in the state.
Healey, a Democrat running for reelection, also signed an executive order that would prohibit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers from making civil arrests in non-public areas of state facilities, and prohibiting the use of state property for immigration enforcement staging.
“We have people right now in Massachusetts who are afraid to send their children to school or to daycare, people afraid to go to church and worship, people afraid to go to the doctor’s for appointments or take their kids to the pediatrician’s office,” Healey said at a press conference.
“This is all making us less, less safe. And as governor, I have a responsibility to protect the people of Massachusetts.”
El Salvador signs trade agreement with the US
El Salvador has signed a trade agreement with the United States, El Salvador’s ambassador to the US Milena Mayorga and US trade representative Jamieson Greer announced today.
The US embassy said it was a deal for “reciprocal trade” which involved “addressing a number of non-tariff barriers including simplifying regulatory requirements.”
In a statement, Greer said: “Today’s signing of the first Agreement on Reciprocal Trade in the Western Hemisphere will further strengthen markets for US exports and lower trade barriers facing American workers and producers. This Agreement is an important step in the deepening of our strategic partnerships in Latin America.”
Part of the “strategic partnerships” that the Trump administration has built with El Salvador was the agreement for the US to expel Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador under Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Deportees under the policy suffered systematic and prolonged torture and abuse during their detention, according to reports.
