APPLENEWS - STORY ADD
Trump admin live updates: Dems react to Hegseth discussing Yemen strike in 2nd chat
The Signal chat included Hegseth's wife, brother and lawyer, sources said.
President Donald Trump continues to take sweeping executive actions in his second term, including an order this week targeting a senior official from his first administration who became one of his critics.
Focus continues on the legal battle regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who was living in Maryland when he was wrongfully deported by the administration.
Latest headlines:
Trump administration ends TPS for Afghans
The Trump administration has canceled Temporary Protection Status (TPS) for Afghans, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security.
Former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended TPS for Afghans until May 20, but after that, according to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, the status will end.
"On March 21, 2025 (the statutory deadline), the Secretary determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its TPS designation and so she terminated TPS for Afghanistan," according to McLaughlin. "The Secretary's decision was based on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) review of the conditions in Afghanistan. As part of its review process, USCIS consulted with the Department of State."
USCIS will publish a notice on the federal register, and on May 20, Afghans will be deportable.
--ABC News' Luke Barr
Official charged with dismantling USAID leaves State Dept
Pete Marocco, the former acting head of USAID who oversaw thousands of cuts to the agency's programs and staff, has now left the State Department, according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.
"Pete was brought to State with a big mission — to conduct an exhaustive review of every dollar spent on foreign assistance. He conducted that historic task and exposed egregious abuses of taxpayer dollars," the senior official told ABC News.
"We all expect big things are in store for Pete on his next mission," they added.
Up until last week, Marocco had been working as the department's director of foreign assistance. As ABC News has previously reported, Marocco often did not see eye to eye with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other top State officials.
--ABC News' Shannon Kingston
Trump says Salvadoran president 'doing a fantastic job' ahead of White House meeting
President Donald Trump is scheduled on Monday to host El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, for a bilateral meeting at the White House.
Trump early on Sunday told reporters he thought Bukele was doing a "fantastic job" and "taking care of a lot of problems that we have that we really wouldn't be able to take care of from a cost standpoint."
As the second Trump administration has cracked down on immigration, El Salvador has accepted into its custody hundreds of alleged gang members. Many are housed in the country's Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security facility for El Salvador's most hardened criminals.
"We have some very bad people in that prison, people that should have never been allowed into our country, people that murder drug dealers, some of the worst people on Earth are in that prison and he's able to do that," Trump said on Sunday.
At least one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was deported due to an "administrative error" and is being held at that notorious prison.
DOJ says federal courts can't direct Trump admin to conduct foreign relations
Federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations or engage with a foreign sovereign in a given matter, the Department of Justice said on Sunday in response to a motion for relief by attorneys for Kilmer Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador.
"Plaintiffs' additional relief runs headlong through this constitutional limit," said attorneys for the Department of Justice in a filing. "They ask this Court to order Defendants to make demands of the El Salvadoran government, dispatch personnel onto the soil of an independent, sovereign nation and send an aircraft into the airspace of a sovereign foreign nation to extract a citizen of that nation from its custody."
The requests by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, the DOJ said, involve "interactions with a foreign sovereign -- and potential violations of that sovereignty."
"Plaintiffs invite this Court to 'exceed' its own 'authority' in the precise sort of way the Supreme Court cautioned against," DOJ added.
-ABC News' Laura Romero