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President Trump says he is bringing back Columbus Day ‘from the ashes’

President Donald Trump is again wading into the debate around Columbus Day.

In an April 27 post on Truth Social, Trump said he’s “bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes.”

A federal holiday since 1892, Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October. But some states and cities have celebrated the date as Indigenous Peoples Day, or celebrate both, amid concerns that honoring Italian explorer Christopher Columbus glorifies the exploitation and genocide of native peoples.

Trump’s focus on Columbus Day comes as his administration has targeted alleged “woke” policies and institutions, including eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the federal government and withholding federal funding from universities over policies he disagrees with.

Trump on Columbus: ‘Christopher is going to make a major comeback’

Former President Joe Biden recognized Indigenous Peoples Day in a 2021 proclamation, becoming the first president to do so. In his Columbus Day proclamation that year, Biden acknowledged “the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities.”

“It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them,” the proclamation continued.

Biden also said the day should be one of reflection on the “courage and contributions of Italian Americans throughout the generations.”

Trump has complained for years that Columbus, who landed in the Americas in 1492, is being mistreated as his legacy is re-evaluated.

First 100 days: Trump promised to improve the economy on Day 1. Americans are still waiting.

“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy,” Trump said in a 2020 Columbus Day proclamation. “These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions.”

Trump has railed against what he described as an effort by Democrats to “destroy” the explorer’s reputation, saying his political rivals “tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all!”

“You’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback,” he wrote on Truth Social. “I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!”

Contributing: Fernando Cervantes Jr.

April 27, 2025
New Details Emerge on Trump Officials’ Sprint to Gut Consumer Bureau Staff

Two weeks ago, a three-judge panel from the federal appeals court in Washington lifted a freeze on firing employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with some conditions. The judges, ruling on a Friday night, said that workers could be fired if agency leaders determined, after a careful assessment, that they were not needed to carry out the bureau’s legally required responsibilities.

Within hours, Trump administration officials — working closely with Elon Musk’s associates at the Department of Government Efficiency — scurried to fire nearly all the agency’s employees. By the following Thursday afternoon, bureau leaders sent termination notices to nearly 1,500 employees, retaining barely 200 people, and ordered that the fired workers’ access to agency systems be shut down the next day.

A judge has again stopped the cuts for now. But the details of what happened at the agency, which oversees banks and lenders and enforces consumer protection laws, will be vital to determining if the firings can proceed. Hundreds of pages of newly released agency records, supplemented by narrative accounts filed in court by more than 20 agency employees, were submitted ahead of a hearing this week before Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington.

Judge Jackson halted the planned firings less than a day after the notices went out, saying that they went far beyond what the appeals court had allowed. Starting Tuesday, she will hold a two-day hearing to take witness testimony and decide whether to extend her order blocking the firings.

The consumer bureau has been on life support since February, when Trump officials arrived at the agency and began dismantling it. A series of federal court rulings prohibited the agency’s destruction. Congress created the agency in 2011 to add safeguards around mortgages and other consumer financial products, and only Congress has the power to abolish it.

Mark Paoletta, the agency’s chief legal officer and the mastermind behind the termination plan, defended the firings, saying in a legal filing that they would “right-size” an agency filled with “vast waste.” Russell Vought, the White House budget office director who also serves as the bureau’s acting director, has called the bureau a “woke and weaponized” agency.

But firing so many workers at once, with no transition period, would destroy the bureau’s ability to operate, employees warned their bosses in emails, chat messages and verbal conversations, according to court records. Within days, critical technical systems would fail, enforcement lawyers would miss court deadlines and agency data that federal courts had ordered be preserved would be lost, they said.

“I don’t think we can keep operating even for 60 days without keeping many of these folks,” Christopher Chilbert, the bureau’s chief information officer, wrote in an email the day the terminations were announced.

Adam Martinez, the agency’s chief operating office, responded: “Understood and I do not disagree. We will really need to spend the next week figuring out a path forward.”

Judge Jackson has asked for the testimony of Gavin Kliger, a 25-year-old associate of Mr. Musk’s who carried out the terminations.

Mr. Kliger, a former Twitter summer intern who had no experience in government work before this year, joined the Office of Personnel Management in January as a senior adviser. He has carried out assignments for Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, in at least nine agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, where he is said to have been recently ousted from.

Emails sent in the hours after the appeals court ruled that staff cuts could move forward show Mr. Musk’s officials scrambling to fire people as quickly as possible — at times moving so fast they appeared to forget which agency they were focused on.

Jeremy Lewin, a 28-year-old lawyer who leads DOGE’s State Department foreign aid actions, sent an email on Saturday from his U.S. Agency for International Development email address laying the groundwork for the reduction in force, the government’s version of a layoff. In a nod to specific language in the appellate court’s order, Mr. Lewin wrote, “Director Vought’s team and I will conduct an individualized assessment to, consistent with the DC Circuit’s stay, ensure that only nonstatutory positions are affected.”

Mr. Paoletta said in court filings that he worked with two other lawyers to conduct a unit-by-unit evaluation of the consumer bureau and determined that the bureau could function without 90 percent of its current staff.

“An approximately 200-person agency allows the bureau to fulfill its statutory duties and better aligns with the new leadership’s priorities and management philosophy,” he said.

But emails and other agency records show that up until nearly the moment the termination notices were sent, bureau officials were still debating the numbers. On the Tuesday before the notices went out, some workers trying to prepare materials believed 485 workers would remain.

Trump officials wanted those slated for termination to be cut off from the agency’s systems less than 24 hours after receiving their layoff notice. One human resources worker involved in the planning asked a manager how people who were traveling and unable to check their email before losing access would be notified of their firing.

“Many people have asked that question. No one making decisions really cares,” the manager responded. “It makes me sad.”

In legal declarations totaling more than 100 pages, department heads — who said they were not consulted by the Trump officials before the firings — and other workers depicted the terminations as reckless and riddled with errors.

The one person Mr. Paoletta left in the Office of Servicemember Affairs, a legally required unit that aids military workers, had already accepted the government’s deferred resignation offer and would be retiring in September. He had turned in his work equipment and lost access to agency systems, workers said — meaning the office would be unstaffed if the firings proceeded.

The head of another legally required department said that he and all of his workers had received termination notices, despite Mr. Paoletta’s testimony that one worker had been retained.

“If there is such a person, that person has not reached out to me or, to my knowledge, to anyone else in my office to understand how we fulfill our statutory mandate,” the department head said.

April 27, 2025
Elon Musk lost popularity as he gained power in Washington, AP-NORC poll finds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary, brushing aside critics and skeptics to become the richest person on the planet.

But as Musk gained power in Washington in recent months, his popularity has waned, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Just 33 percent of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Musk, the chain-saw-wielding, late-night-posting, campaign-hat-wearing public face of President Donald Trump’s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. That share is down from 41 percent in December.

READ MORE: Musk says he’ll step back from DOGE to focus on Tesla as company sees 71 percent drop in Q1 profits

“It was a shame that he crashed and burned his reputation,” said Ernest Pereira, 27, a Democrat who works as a lab technician in North Carolina. “He bought into his own hype.”

The poll found that about two-thirds of adults believe Musk has held too much influence over the federal government during the past few months — although that influence may be coming to an end. The billionaire entrepreneur is expected to leave his administration job in the coming weeks.

Musk is noticeably less popular than the overall effort to pare back the government workforce, which Trump has described as bloated and corrupt. About half of U.S. adults believe the Republican president has gone too far on reducing the size of the federal workforce, while roughly 3 in 10 think he is on target and 14 percent want him to go even further.

Retiree Susan Wolf, 75, of Pennsylvania, believes the federal government is too big but Musk has “made a mess of everything.”

“I don’t trust him,” she said. “I don’t think he knows what he’s doing.”

Wolf, who is not registered with a political party, said Musk’s private sector success does not translate to Washington.

“He thinks you run a government like you run a business. And you don’t do that,” she said. “One is for the benefit of the people, and the other is for the benefit of the corporation.”

Much of the downsizing has been done through so-called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was Musk’s brainchild during last year’s campaign. Thousands of federal employees have been fired or pushed to quit, contracts have been canceled and entire agencies have been brought to a standstill.

Musk has succeeded in providing a dose of shock therapy to the federal government, but he has fallen short of other goals. After talking about cutting spending by $1 trillion, he has set a much lower target of $150 billion. Even reaching that amount could prove challenging, and DOGE has regularly overstated its progress.

He is expected to start dedicating more time to Tesla, his electric automaker that has suffered plummeting revenue while he was working for Trump. Musk told investors on a recent conference call that “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done,” he expects to spend just “a day or two per week on government matters.”

WATCH: Tesla revenue falls sharply as Musk faces political backlash

Musk, in his work for the administration, has continued a political evolution toward the right. Although the South African-born entrepreneur was never easy to categorize ideologically, he championed the fight against climate change and often supported Democratic candidates.

Now he criticizes “the woke mind virus” and warns of the collapse of Western civilization from the threats of illegal migration and excess government spending.

Musk’s increasingly conservative politics are reflected in the polling. Only about 2 in 10 independents and about 1 in 10 Democrats view Musk favorably, compared with about 7 in 10 Republicans.

In addition, while about 7 in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats believe Musk has too much influence, only about 4 in 10 Republicans feel that way.

Mark Collins, 67, a warehouse manager from Michigan who has leaned Republican in recent years, said Musk “runs a nice, tight ship” at his companies, “and the government definitely needs tightening up.”

“He’s cleaning up all the trash,” he said. “I love what he’s doing.”

Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to be worried about being affected by recent cuts to federal government agencies, services or grants. Just 11 percent said they are “extremely” or “very” concerned that they or someone they know will be affected, while about two-thirds of Democrats and 44 percent of independents have those fears.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,260 adults was conducted April 17-21, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

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April 27, 2025
Mike Myers Defends ‘SNL’ Canada Protest Following Elon Musk Comments

Mike Myers has continued to make headlines after wearing a “Canada is Not for Sale” T-shirt on “Saturday Night Live” back in March. Now, Myers is defending his decision to publicly support Canada after Elon Musk said that it was “not a real country.”

While Myers originally didn’t plan on making a remark or statement, the “Austin Powers” and “Shrek” star began getting “angrier and angrier” throughout the night, he told the New York Times. “What happened came from my ankles and from my brain and from my heart, and it was not about me — it was about my country. I wanted to send a message home to say that I’m with you, you know.”

While making his first “SNL” appearance in over 10 years, he mouthed “elbows up” to the camera twice. This past month, Myers reprised his role as Trump’s right-hand man, Musk, in a cold open, where he addressed the rise in Tesla cars getting vandalized and attacked.

Myers went on to tell the New York Times how “no one is more Canadian than a person who no longer lives in Canada. We love America. We love you guys. We don’t understand what this madness is.”

Myers is far from the first celebrity to use the “SNL” stage as an opportunity to speak out since Trump was elected to office. Recently, Trump’s tariffs were front and center as James Austin Johnson played the president, saying: “Remind you of anyone? I also got rid of money last week, but instead of one temple, I did a whole country. Maybe even the globe.”

April 27, 2025
Man found dead in car submerged in California river: Reports

A missing man’s body was recovered after police found his vehicle submerged in a California river, according to local reports.

Clifford Souza, 74, was first reported missing on April 23 and was last seen driving in a gray Ford Ranger pickup truck in Gualala, California, around 125 miles northwest of San Francisco, local news outlets KRON4 and Fox 2 reported.

On Saturday, California Highway Patrol responded to a call that reported a submerged vehicle off Highway 1, where Souza was later found in the Russian River in Sonoma County, according to KRON4.

The crash remains under investigation, California Highway Patrol told the news outlet.

USA TODAY has contacted the California Highway Patrol for more details.

How did the crash happen?

Authorities believe Souza was traveling on the highway when the truck veered and landed in the river, Fox2 reported. It is not clear when the crash occurred.

Anyone with information regarding the crash is asked to call the California Highway Patrol’s Santa Rosa office at 707-806-5600.

April 27, 2025
Booker, Jeffries slam Trump budget plan in sit-in at Capitol
- Sen. Cory Booker and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries livestreamed their appeal from the U.S. Capitol.
- Booker and Jeffries criticized the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget.
- The proposed budget includes cuts to programs such as Medicaid, Head Start and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
Sen. Cory Booker and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a live-streamed appeal from the steps of the U.S. Capital on April 27, demonstrating against Republican-backed budget plans.

Starting just after 6 a.m., the lawmakers addressed viewers about the Trump administration’s proposed budget that they said would slash programs in housing, health care and education that help millions of Americans, while expanding tax breaks for the wealthiest.

“Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump’s desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires,” Booker said in a statement. “Given what’s at stake, these could be some of the most consequential weeks for seniors, kids and families in generations.”

Congress will take up the fiscal 2026 budget proposal when they return to session Monday after a two-week recess. The administration’s plan would cut billions of dollars from programs that support childcare, health research, education and housing, the New York Times, which obtained preliminary budget documents, reported.

Programs including Head Start, which provides child care and preschool education to low-income families, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps struggling households pay for heating and cooling, are on the chopping block. The proposal also includes massive cuts to federal health agencies.

Calling budgets a reflection of “what we value, who we protect, and what we stand for,” Booker and Jeffries urged Americans to speak out.

Trump has called for shrinking federal government that he says “spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.” Even if Congress approves the budget cuts, fiscal experts say the federal deficit could grow significantly due to Trump’s proposed tax cuts. The tax cuts would add at least $5 trillion to the deficit in 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Trump made tax cuts a centerpiece of his campaign, with proposals to eliminate taxes on tips and Social Security benefits, but it will cost trillions of dollars to extend tax cuts from his first administration even before adding his new proposals.

Trump allies such as Steve Bannon have supported raising taxes on the rich, but the president hadn’t taken a position. Trump has suggested tariffs could potentially replace the income tax, even though economists warn that tariffs raise far less revenue and fall harder on lower-income households.

The Democratic sit-in, held on what the lawmakers called a day of “faith, spirituality, and moral reflection,” has been streaming on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and YouTube.

Booker made history earlier this month with a marathon speech on the Senate floor, railing against the Trump administration’s actions, policies and plans for more than 25 hours.

Contributing: Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
April 27, 2025
Bill Belichick girlfriend shuts down question about relationship

Don’t ask North Carolina head football coach Bill Belichick how he met his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson. At least, not while she’s around to hear it.

CBS Mornings host Tony Dokoupil learned that the hard way while interviewing Belichick as part of the coach’s efforts to promote his new book, “The Art of Winning.”

Dokoupil asked Belichick how he deals with the many opinions and investment people have in his relationship with Hudson.

“I’ve never been too worried about what everybody else thinks,” Belichick said. “Just try to do what I feel like is best for me and what’s right.”

“How did you guys meet?” Dokoupil asked.

Hudson cut in after Dokoupil’s question, saying, “We’re not talking about this.”

After the interjection, Dokoupil pivoted to asking about Belichick’s recent adoption of social media. The CBS interviewer asked the NFL coaching legend about the public response to a few of Hudson’s Instagram posts that Belichick appeared in.

“It’s charming, it’s a different side of you. What’s the reaction been like?” Dokoupil asked.

“What’s it been like?” Belichick responded after a pause.

Dokoupil clarified his question, asking again about “these different sort of photos,” including an image of Hudson balanced on Belichick’s feet on a beach.

“Yeah, so I’m on some of those social media platforms, but I honestly don’t follow them.”

After winning six Super Bowls as an NFL head coach, Belichick will begin his first year of coaching at the collegiate level this year. He’s taking over the reins as the head football coach for the North Carolina Tar Heels a year after they finished 6-7 (3-5 ACC) and 13th in the ACC.

April 27, 2025
Immigration sweep in Florida leads to almost 800 arrests

FORT MYERS, Fla. − Almost 800 people have been arrested in the first few days of Operation Tidal Wave, a multi-agency immigration enforcement crackdown in Florida, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities announced.

ICE called the effort a “first-of-its-kind partnership” involving state and federal agencies and local law enforcement. The agency, in a statement Saturday, lauded local police agencies for providing “extraordinary support” for the crackdown that began April 21.

“This is a warning to all criminal illegal aliens: We’re coming for you,” Homeland Security Secretary Krisiti Noem wrote in a social media post. “@DHSgov, @ICEgov, and our state partners will hunt you down, arrest and deport you. That’s a promise.”

All 67 Florida county sheriffs already agreed to partner with ICE. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Operation Tidal Wave an example of the “big results on immigration enforcement an deportations” that federal, state and local agencies can accomplish by working together.

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said the operation was a “major success” and that more such crackdowns are planned in coming months.

“Almost 800 aliens including MS-13 gang members, including convicted murders, rapists, all these people are now off our streets who have otherwise been acting with impunity and terrorizing U.S. communities,” McLaughlin said on Fox News. “You are going to be seeing this throughout the country.”

2-year-old citizen apparently deported: ‘No meaningful process,’ judge says

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said last month that he planned to investigate Fort Myers City Council after it failed to agree to the partnership, calling the refusal “very troubling” − and illegal.

Naples Congressman Byron Donalds, a Trump-backed gubernatorial hopeful, said City Council members who refused to go along with the ICE agreement should lose their jobs. Gov. Ron DeSantis also weighed-in, writing that “Florida will ensure its laws are followed, and when it comes to immigration − the days of inaction are over. Govern yourselves accordingly.”

Days later, City Council voted again and approved the ICE partnership. “Good Choice,” Uthmeier said in a social media post.

April 27, 2025
Huawei’s “Next-Gen” Ascend 910D Chip To Disrupt NVIDIA’s Position In Chinese AI Markets; Set To Rival Against Hopper H100

Huawei’s next-gen Ascend 910D AI chip has surfaced in supply chains, as the Chinese giant is set to replace NVIDIA as the dominant player in the domestic AI industry.

Huawei’s Ascend 910D AI Chip Is In The Sampling Stages; Partners To Get Chips As Soon As Next Month

Well, it seems like Team Green isn’t having a great time at all in China’s AI markets, given that not only is the firm subjected to new export restrictions, but its competitors, notably Huawei, are ramping up the competition with new and advanced AI solutions. Now, in a report by the Wall Street Journal, it is disclosed that Huawei is now in the testing phase of their next-gen Ascend 910D AI chip, and that domestic firms are set to receive samples by late May, showing that the firm won’t stop at all when it comes to conquering the local AI markets.

While details about Ascend 910D are uncertain, the report claims that the chip will be more powerful than NVIDIA’s Hopper generation H100 AI accelerators, which were a favorite of the Chinese AI industry back when the hype started. It is claimed that Huawei’s Ascend 910C chip didn’t manage to deliver to the expectations of the Chinese industry at all, since it was claimed to be a rival of NVIDIA’s H100, but only managed to compete against the more cut-down H20 AI GPU, which is still a massive achievement.

Huawei isn’t just making strides in the standalone AI GPU segment; the company has been developing capable AI clusters that compete with modern-day counterparts from NVIDIA. We reported previously that the firm had developed the CloudMatrix 384 AI cluster, featuring Ascend AI chips and performance comparable to NVIDIA’s GB200 NVL72 “Blackwell” AI server, by simply prioritizing performance over efficiency. This shows that Huawei isn’t far away when it comes to technological superiority relative to its Western counterparts.

The only major problem Huawei faces right now is getting the essentials, since the supply chain is pretty confined for them. The Chinese tech giant currently relies on chips from SMIC and TSMC (which were sourced before the export restrictions), but due to having a low supply, the company cannot capitalize on the demand entirely. Apart from this, Huawei needs to rely on old technologies like HBM2, which means that it needs to rely on other methods to source more power, including ignoring perf/watt figures.

April 27, 2025
Rubio pressed on 2, 4 and 7-year-old citizens removed from country

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said three young children, ages 2, 4 and 7, who are all United States citizens and removed from the country in recent weeks, were “not deported” but “went with their mothers” to Honduras.

The children, from two different families, were put on a flight to the Central American country with their mothers on April 25, according to multiple outlets.

The 4 year old has Stage 4 cancer and is without access to medication or contact with doctors, The Washington Post and the Associated Press reported. The 4 year old and 7 year old are siblings.

More: 2-year-old U.S. citizen apparently deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ judge says

NBC News’ Kristen Welker referred to the Post’s account in an interview on “Meet the Press” with Rubio April 27. The secretary of State pushed back, calling the headline “misleading.”

“Three U.S. citizens ages four, seven and two were not deported,” Rubio said. “Their mothers, who were illegally in this country, were deported. The children went with their mothers.”

“If those children are U.S. citizens, they can come back into the United States if their father or someone here wants to assume them,” he added.

According to court documents, a lawyer for the father of the 2-year-old, a girl identified by the initials V.M.L., called immigration officials when the family was detained in Louisiana to inform them that the child is a citizen. The girl’s mother was apprehended as she attended a routine appointment at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New Orleans office.

The father, who lives in the United States, asked for V.M.L. to be placed with a custodian “ready and willing” to care for her in the country. He was told he would also be taken into custody if he were to try to pick up his daughter, according to the court filing.

V.M.L., her mother and sister, who is 11 and was born in Honduras, were deported early Friday morning. Lawyers representing their family had already filed a petition seeking the 2-year-old girl’s release.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty scheduled a hearing for May 19 “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

“It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen,” Doughty said.

Asked whether citizens and noncitizens alike are entitled to due process, Rubio on Sunday answered, “Yes, of course.”

“But let me tell you, in immigration standing the laws are very specific,” he continued, defending the removals. “If you’re in this country unlawfully, you have no right to be here and you must be removed. That’s what the law says. Somehow over the last 20 years we’ve completely lost this notion.”

Contributing: Sarah Wire, USA TODAY; Reuters

April 27, 2025