Trump signs orders to eliminate DEI from US military and reinstate troops who refused Covid vaccines – as it happened

That’s all from us today. It was another busy day at the start of the second week of Trump’s second term.

Here’s what happened:

• Donald Trump signed three executive orders on Monday that would reshape the military, including gutting the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and reinstating service members with backpay who were discharged for refusing to get vaccinated from Covid-19. One executive order directed the Pentagon to come up with a policy around transgender members in the US armed forces. It does not yet ban trans soldiers.

• Trump also signed an executive order on Monday that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield, which the administration is referring to as the American Iron Dome.

• A judge has dropped restrictions that barred the former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group, Stewart Rhodes, from entering Washington DC and the US Capitol. US district judge Amit Mehta lifted his order after finding that Trump’s decision to cut short their prison sentences also released them from a term of court supervision. Rhodes and his co-defendants were released from prison last week as part of Trump’s order granting clemency to all nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack on the Capitol.

• US Senate votes 68-29 to confirm billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as treasury secretary.

• DoJ fires more than a dozen officials who worked on Trump election interference cases after acting attorney general James McHenry said he did “not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the president’s agenda”.

• More than 50 USAID officials were put on administrative leave as Trump halts all foreign aid pending a 90-day-review.

• One of the inspector generals who was fired by Donald Trump has warned that the president’s terminations amount to a “threat to democracy”. Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the former inspector general (IG) for the Small Business Administration, spoke to MSNBC after Trump fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies on Friday night, eliminating a critical oversight component and clearing the way for him to replace them with loyalists.

• Trump issued an executive order on Sunday directing federal government to override California’s water management practices if they are found to be ineffective. Trump has falsely claimed that California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires. His order directs federal agencies to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries”.

• The US and Colombia pulled back from the brink of a trade war on Sunday after the White House said the Colombians had agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants. Trump had threatened tariffs and sanctions on Colombia to punish it for earlier refusing to accept military flights carrying deportees amid his sweeping immigration crackdown, but a White House statement late on Sunday said Colombia had agreed to accept the migrants and Washington would not impose its threatened penalties.

• A series of immigration raids were conducted in cities over the weekend in what the “border czar”, Tom Homan, claimed was only “the beginning stages” of Trump’s promised threat to deport millions of people from the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said it had made 956 arrests on Sunday, bringing the total since Trump took office to 2,681 arrests.

• House Oversight Committee chair James Comer is requesting the mayors of sanctuary cities – Boston, New York, Denver and Chicago – to testify on 11 February as part of an investigation into the impact sanctuary policies have on public safety.

• Trump said the emergence of a new AI model called DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a “wake-up call” for American companies. The release of Deepseek AI sent US stocks plummeting on Monday as it became the most downloaded app in the US. Its capabilities were compared to the latest OpenAI model which put into question US leadership in the AI boom. American companies “need to be laser-focused on competing to win”, he said.

• Senate Democrats signed on to a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s decision to pardon January 6 defendants who assaulted police officers. The one-line resolution indicates: “The Senate disapproves of any pardons for individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol police officers.”

• The Senate is expected to vote on the confirmation of the billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as treasury secretary. On Saturday, the Senate voted 67-23 to advance Bessent’s nomination. A final vote is scheduled to take place this evening at 5.30pm ET.

• Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been ordered to immediately stop engaging with the World Health Organization (WHO). The move affects critical work on influenza surveillance and disease outbreaks across the globe. Trump announced last week that the US will exit the WHO, citing what he described as a mishandling of the Covid-19 and other international health crises.

• Republicans in the Florida legislature delivered a significant snub to the governor, Ron DeSantis, by abruptly halting his proposals for a crackdown on immigration in the state. The governor’s goals included making it a state crime for undocumented migrants to enter Florida; pressuring local authorities to join in a deportation purge, and punishing those who do not; and appointing a dedicated state “immigration officer” to liaise with the Trump administration under his personal authority.

• JD Vance defended some of Trump’s controversial cabinet nominations in advance of further confirmation hearings this week. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vance said Hegseth is a “disrupter” and described Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, as being of “impeccable character, impeccable record of service, and she also is a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services”.

Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday evening including one that would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from the military, Reuters is reporting. The White House also told Reuters, that Trump signed an order that eliminated “gender radicalism” from the military.

The order does not yet ban transgender soldiers from the military, but directs the Pentagon to create a policy for transgender members of the military, CBS is reporting.

Another order Trump signed reinstated soldiers who were expelled for refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Trump also signed an executive order to establish a process to build a short-range missile defense system akin to Israel’s Iron Dome. This would take years to build.

The orders were signed on US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s first day. Hegseth, who narrowly secured enough votes to be confirmed, said he planned to make major changes in the Pentagon. He did not rule out making changes to the top brass.

Abené Clayton

A Black county commissioner in Ohio dropped out of a keynote speech at a Martin Luther King Jr Day lunch after being told that he wasn’t allowed to mention diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), journalist Phil Lewis reports.

Kevin Boyce, Franklin county’s first Black county commission said that two hours before he was supposed to deliver his address to a crowd at Columbus’s department of veteran affairs (VA) he was told that he wasn’t allowed to mention DEI.

It was an insult,” Boyce told Lewis. “It was an insult to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. It was an insult to my own personal journey that they asked me to talk about. How can I talk about my journey and MLK Jr without discussing diversity, equity, and inclusion, especially given the [Trump] administration’s executive order?”

Read the rest of Phil’s report here.

Trump said the emergence of a new AI model called DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a “wake-up call” for American companies.

The release of Deepseek AI sent US stocks plummeting on Monday as it became the most downloaded app in the US. Its capabilities were compared to the latest OpenAI model which put into question US leadership in the AI boom.

American companies “need to be laser-focused on competing to win”, he said.

Trump said his decision to revoke the Biden AI rules through executive order will allow AI companies to “focus on being the best” instead of on being the most woke.

US senators have voted to confirm Scott Bessent as US treasury secretary, according to Reuters. Trump’s treasury pick is a billionaire hedge fund manager from South Carolina who the Financial Times is reporting is pushing for a 2.5% universal tariff on US imports that increases every month.