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Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Trump’s first full day back in White House includes firings and an infrastructure announcement

by

35 days ago
20250121
President Donald Trump attends the national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump attends the national prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Evan Vucci

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is spend­ing his first full day back in the White House meet­ing with con­gres­sion­al lead­ers, an­nounc­ing an in­vest­ment in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in­fra­struc­ture and demon­strat­ing one of his favoured ex­pres­sions of pow­er: fir­ing peo­ple.

The new pres­i­dent post­ed on his Truth so­cial me­dia net­work ear­ly Tues­day that he would fire more than 1,000 pres­i­den­tial ap­pointees “who are not aligned with our vi­sion,” in­clud­ing some high-pro­file names.

Trump fired chef and hu­man­i­tar­i­an Jose An­dres from the Pres­i­dent’s Coun­cil on Sports, Fit­ness and Nu­tri­tion, re­tired Gen. Mark Mil­ley from the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil, for­mer State De­part­ment of­fi­cial Bri­an Hook from the board of the Wil­son Cen­ter and for­mer At­lanta May­or Keisha Lance Bot­toms from the Pres­i­dent’s Ex­port Coun­cil.

“YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump said in his post — his catch­phrase from his re­al­i­ty TV show, “The Ap­pren­tice.”

For­mer Pres­i­dent Joe Biden al­so re­moved many Trump ap­pointees in his first days in of­fice, in­clud­ing for­mer press sec­re­tary Sean Spicer from the board over­see­ing the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my.

Trump was set to con­tin­ue build­ing on his bar­rage of In­au­gu­ra­tion Day an­nounce­ments on Tues­day with plans to an­nounce a new part­ner­ship to in­vest in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Three ma­jor busi­ness lead­ers — Soft­Bank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, Ope­nAI CEO Sam Alt­man and Or­a­cle Corp. Chair­man Lar­ry El­li­son — were sched­uled to join Trump in the af­ter­noon to an­nounce the cre­ation of a new com­pa­ny called Star­gate, which would in­vest up to $500 bil­lion over the next four years in AI in­fra­struc­ture, ac­cord­ing to the White House.

Star­gate in­tends to start build­ing the project in Texas.

Trump al­so at­tend­ed a na­tion­al prayer ser­vice Tues­day morn­ing at Wash­ing­ton Na­tion­al Cathe­dral, a cus­tom­ary vis­it for new pres­i­dents and one that will wrap up his four days of in­au­gu­ra­tion-re­lat­ed events.

One of the speak­ers at the in­ter­faith ser­vice, the Right Rev. Mar­i­ann Bud­de, the Epis­co­pal bish­op of Wash­ing­ton, used her ser­mon to send a mes­sage to Trump, urg­ing com­pas­sion for LGBTQ+ peo­ple and un­doc­u­ment­ed mi­grant work­ers.

“You have felt the prov­i­den­tial hand of a lov­ing God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mer­cy on the peo­ple in our coun­try who are scared now,” said Bud­de, who has crit­i­cized Trump be­fore.

Asked af­ter­ward by a re­porter what he thought of the ser­vice, Trump said: “Not too ex­cit­ing was it. I didn’t think it was a good ser­vice. They could do much bet­ter.”

Lat­er in the day, the pres­i­dent was ex­pect­ed to meet with House Speak­er Mike John­son and Sen­ate Ma­jor­i­ty Leader John Thune and oth­er GOP leg­is­la­tors. It’s the first for­mal sit-down for the GOP lead­er­ship teams, in­clud­ing House Ma­jor­i­ty Leader Steve Scalise, Sen­ate GOP Whip John Bar­ras­so and the new pres­i­dent, as they chart pri­or­i­ties for us­ing Re­pub­li­can pow­er in Wash­ing­ton.

De­spite an am­bi­tious 100-day agen­da, the Re­pub­li­can-led Con­gress is not on the same page on some ideas and strate­gies as they rush to de­liv­er tax cuts for the wealthy, mass de­por­ta­tions and oth­er goals for Trump.

Trump used the first hours of his pres­i­den­cy on Mon­day to sign a se­ries of ex­ec­u­tive or­ders and mem­o­ran­dums, mov­ing quick­ly to show that his new hold on the U.S. gov­ern­ment would be a stark change from his pre­de­ces­sor.

He par­doned hun­dreds of peo­ple for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, at­tack on the U.S. Capi­tol, with­drew the U.S. from the Paris cli­mate ac­cords and the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion, be­gan his im­mi­gra­tion crack­down by de­clar­ing a na­tion­al emer­gency at the U.S.-Mex­i­co bor­der and sought to end au­to­mat­ic cit­i­zen­ship for any­one born in Amer­i­ca, which is ex­pect­ed to run in­to con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges.

He al­so signed an or­der that in­tends to pause a ban on Tik­Tok for 75 days to give its Chi­na-based par­ent com­pa­ny more time to find an ap­proved buy­er. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

________

Sto­ry by MICHELLE L. PRICE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Will Weis­sert, Dar­lene Su­perville, Tiffany Stan­ley and Zeke Miller con­tributed to this re­port.


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