Trump administration must pay debts to USAID partners by Monday, judge rules
Gary Grumbach and Nnamdi Egwuonwu
A federal judge is giving the Trump administration until Monday to pay several nonprofit groups and aid organizations that were affected by Trump’s order to freeze foreign assistance and shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In a ruling yesterday, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali formalized a plan to ensure the federal government releases funds to at least nine groups, including the Global Health Council, Chemonics International and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition.
Ali previously ordered the administration to temporarily disburse foreign aid that was in place before Trump took office Jan. 20, an amount the government estimated to be up to $2 billion.
Freshman senators introduce bipartisan legislation to hasten wildfire response
Sens. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., and Andy Kim, D-N.J., announced today that they are introducing legislation to set a national standard for wildfire response time on federal lands.
The Wildfire Response and Preparedness Act would establish a 30-minute national standard response time for wildfires on federal land administered by the Interior or Agriculture departments.
“Establishing an aggressive national wildfire standard response time, just like we have for structure fires, is an America First, commonsense way to protect our nation and our people,” Sheehy said in a statement. “The WRAP Act will help our brave firefighters put out wildfires while they are small and dramatically reduce catastrophic wildfire damage. This bill will save lives and prevent hundreds of billions of dollars in future property damage.”
The standard response time set by the National Fire Protection Association for structural fires is just shy of 5½ minutes. But there is no such standard for wildfires, which the senators said lets fires sometimes rage for days and increases the risk of significant damage.
White House hosts crypto summit
The White House is set to host a cryptocurrency summit today chaired by the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, David Sacks, and administered by the executive director of Trump’s working group on digital assets, Bo Hines.
The White House said in a statement announcing the summit last week that “prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry,” in addition to members of the working group on digital assets, would attend.
Trump signed an executive order last night establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile using assets forfeited through civil and criminal proceedings.
Trump vowed on Truth Social this week that he “will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”