Lauren Aratani

Tens of thousands of US federal employees could lose their jobs after the Trump administration moves to reduce the size of the federal workforce dramatically.

With Elon Musk at the helm of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which is overseeing efforts to cull federal employment, the White House has embarked on multiple plans to cut down on virtually all areas of federal employment.

There are no official numbers of how many federal employees will be affected, and many of Donald Trump and Musk’s efforts have been stalled in court, but the impact could be big and long-lasting.

To understand what the cuts will do to federal operations, we first have to understand who works for the federal government and what they do. Here’s what we know about the federal workforce.

As deadly severe storms swept the US this week, recent Donald Trump administration staffing cuts have left key parts of weather monitoring and disaster preparedness systems severely understaffed, the Guardian has learned.

March typically signals the start of a four-month tornado season across the eastern two-thirds of the US. Last year’s tornado season was one of the most prolific on record, and this year’s tornado season is getting off to an early active start.

A multi-day tornado outbreak tore across several southern states, with significant damage reported near Ada, Oklahoma, including part of an elementary school. Dangerous storms then spread eastward into the Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic. Strong winds in Mississippi killed and injured multiple people in separate incidents.

The period of unsettled weather raised concerns internally among National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists that the newly downsized agency could be stretched thin.

Donald Trump said he wants to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran and sent a letter to its leadership on Thursday saying he hoped they would agree to talk.

“I said I hope you’re going to negotiate, because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran,” the US president said in the interview with Fox Business Network broadcast on Friday.

“I think they want to get that letter. The other alternative is we have to do something, because you can’t let another nuclear weapon.”

The letter appeared to have been addressed to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The White House did not immediately respond to a request about that, Reuters reported.

The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, discussed international efforts to resolve the situation around Iran’s nuclear program with the Iranian ambassador, Kazem Jalali, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday.

Lauren Gambino

Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California believed to be eyeing a run for president in 2028, is facing fierce backlash from LGBTQ+ rights advocates after his suggestion that the participation of transgender women and girls in female sports was “deeply unfair”.

In the inaugural episode of his podcast, This Is Gavin Newsom, the governor hosted conservative political activist and Maga darling Charlie Kirk. The co-founder and executive director of the rightwing Turning Point USA, a Phoenix-based organization that operates on school campuses, told Newsom: “You, right now, should come out and be like: ‘You know what? The young man who’s about to win the state championship in the long jump in female sports – that shouldn’t happen.’ You, as the governor, should step out and say: ‘No.’”

The governor responded: “I think it’s an issue of fairness. I completely agree with you on that … it’s deeply unfair.”

Members of his own party in California quickly condemned the comments.

“We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks,” assembly member Chris Ward and senator Caroline Menjivar, of the California legislative LGBTQ+ caucus, said in a statement. “All students deserve the academic and health benefits of sports activity, and until Donald Trump began obsessing about it, playing on a team consistent with one’s gender has not been a problem since the standard was passed in 2013.”

California law has long protected trans youth’s rights to participate in school activities that match their gender.

Andrew Roth

Staff on hundreds of foreign aid projects left in limbo by the Trump administration’s funding freeze have received a survey that asks them to justify their work under an eccentric list of criteria that meet the White House’s new national security priorities.

The survey, copies of which have been obtained by the Guardian, asks foreign aid programme staff to detail whether they contribute to limiting illegal immigration or securing US borders, “combatting Christian prosecution”,and whether they help the US secure access to rare earth minerals.

It also includes a litmus test on several controversial issues banned under the Trump administration. “Can you confirm this is not a climate or ‘environmental justice’ project or include such elements? [yes/no],” the survey asks. It also asks: “Can you confirm that this is no DEI [diversity, equality and inclusion] project or DEI elements of the project? [yes /no].”

The questionnaire, which was distributed eight weeks after the US president issued a foreign aid funding freeze, comes as thousands of projects have already laid off staff and cut ties with local partners, meaning that even if stop-work orders are lifted the programmes may remain shuttered.

The administration has claimed that it has restored funding for life-saving programmes and has developed a rigorous criteria for reviewing all foreign aid spending. But staff have described a chaotic process or a complete lack of communication with USAid and State Department officials meant to review their programmes.

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the coming hours.

We start with news that the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said China will continue to retaliate against the United States’ “arbitrary tariffs”. Donald Trump is continuing with his action against China despite pausing similar measures against Canada and Mexico.

In a press conference on Friday, Wang said China’s efforts to help the US contain its fentanyl crisis have been met with punitive tariffs, which are straining the ties between the countries.

“No country should fantasise that it can suppress China and maintain a good relationship with China at the same time,” Wang said. “Such two-faced acts are not good for the stability of bilateral relations or for building mutual trust.”

The two countries have been engaging in tit-for-tat retaliatory tariffs since Trump’s return to office in January.

The US has imposed flat tariffs of 20% on all Chinese imports, while Beijing has countered with additional 15% duties on US imports including chicken, pork, soy and beef, as well as expanded controls on doing business with key US companies.

It comes as Trump once again put a central part of his trade war on pause, temporarily exempting from tariffs Mexican and Canadian goods covered by the continental free trade agreement he negotiated in his first term.

However, the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month.

In other news:

• Trump told his cabinet secretaries that they are in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies, not Elon Musk.

• The House has voted to censure Democratic congressman Al Green for disrupting Trump’s address to this week’s joint session of Congress. The motion was approved with 224 votes in favor and 198 opposed, with 10 Democrats in support.

• In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense.

• US district judge Beryl Howell ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was illegal and ordered that she be reinstated to her post.

• Axios reports that the state department is hunting for evidence that foreign students who express support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation while studying in the US are “pro-Hamas”, and can have their visas revoked, based on an AI review of their social media accounts.

• Trump thanked a reporter for the partisan outlet Breitbart for asking him a friendly question in the Oval Office, which teed him up to attack Democrats. The White House excluded non-partisan reporters from Reuters and the Associated Press to make room for Breitbart and One America News, two pro-Trump outlets.

• Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening to establish a “strategic bitcoin reserve”, a day before meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency industry at the White House.

• The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who reportedly endured a profanity-laced tirade from Trump, was asked about his foreign minister’s comment that dealing with the US was now “a psychodrama”. “How would you characterize it?” a reporter asked. “Thursday”, Trudeau replied.