Reuters US Domestic News Summary

Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs.

Some US medical schools to teach nutrition under government deal

About a fourth of U.S. medical schools will expand their nutrition education offerings this autumn as part of a deal with the administration of President Donald Trump, said Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday. Kennedy and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have pursued the deal as part of Trump's Make America Healthy Again agenda, which promotes healthy eating and has also underpinned Kennedy's actions to overhaul ​federal vaccine policy.

Trump undertakes sweeping makeover of White House and Washington

President Donald Trump is pursuing an ambitious remaking of Washington, from a $400 million White House ballroom to a 250-foot arch and a renovated Kennedy Center. Trump's sweeping redesign efforts would be arguably the most dramatic by a U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt championed a structural overhaul ​of the National Mall in the early 1900s. In the 1950s, Harry Truman gutted and rebuilt the White House.

FBI 'identified and addressed' suspicious cyber activity on its networks, agency spokesperson says

The FBI "identified and addressed suspicious ‌activities" on its networks, an agency spokesperson ​said on Thursday, adding that the bureau had "leveraged all technical capabilities to respond." The spokesperson declined to provide any details as to the nature of the activity, when it was identified or where within the FBI's computer networks.

Exclusive-Trump tells Reuters he did not sign off on ad campaign featuring homeland security secretary

President Donald Trump told Reuters on Thursday that he did not sign off on a $220 million border security advertising campaign featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who faced bipartisan criticism over the commercials during U.S. congressional hearings this week. "I never knew anything about it," the Republican president told Reuters in a phone interview.

US Senate backs Trump on Iran strikes, blocks bid to limit his war powers

U.S. Senate Republicans backed President Donald Trump's military campaign against Iran on Wednesday, voting to block a bipartisan resolution aiming to stop the air war and require that any hostilities against Iran be authorized by Congress. The Senate voted 53 to 47 not to advance the resolution, largely along party lines, with all but one Republican voting against the procedural motion and all but one Democrat supporting it.

xAI ‌loses bid to halt California AI data disclosure law

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI failed to convince a California federal court on Thursday to temporarily block the state's law requiring companies to disclose information about the data they use to train AI models. U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal in Los Angeles said that xAI had not yet shown it was likely to prove the law violated its free-speech rights or was otherwise unconstitutional.

FAA seeking steeper cuts in flights at Chicago O'Hare airport, sources say

The Federal Aviation Administration told airlines it wants to cut a few hundred additional daily flights at Chicago O'Hare airport this summer over what it initially outlined last week, sources told Reuters on Thursday. Last week, the FAA proposed a 2,800 per day limit, down from the 3,080 daily operations announced for the summer, but above last summer's 2,680 daily flights, citing concerns about delays and airline overscheduling. The FAA told airlines this week it wants to limit flights to around 2,500 per day, but that number remains under discussion, the sources added.

US House committee wants travel companies to answer questions on AI use for pricing

The chair of the U.S. House Oversight Committee on Thursday asked the CEOs of five major travel companies including Uber, Lyft and Expedia to disclose whether they were using surveillance pricing of consumers to hike costs. Representative James Comer, the Republican chair of the committee, raised concern in letters to the companies that the rise of surveillance pricing algorithms and use of highly personalized consumer data may create opportunities "for companies to ‌weaponize personal data and pad their profit margins at the expense of providing transparency to consumers."

US House rejects war powers resolution, backs Trump on Iran war

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected an effort on Thursday to stop President Donald Trump's air war on Iran and require that any hostilities against Iran be authorized by Congress, backing the Republican president's military campaign on the sixth day of the expanding conflict. The vote was 219 to 212, largely along party lines, in the House, where Trump's fellow Republicans control a narrow majority of seats. Two Republicans voted in favor of the resolution and four Democrats voted against it.

Trump can suspend refugee admissions, US appeals court rules

President Donald Trump has ‌the authority to indefinitely suspend admissions of foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States under the U.S. refugee resettlement program, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday, backing a key element of his hardline approach toward immigration. A California-based three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reached that conclusion as it overturned most of the injunctions issued by a judge in Seattle last year against Trump's halt on refugee admissions and related actions.

US charter flight repatriating Americans from Middle East, State Department says

A U.S. government charter flight was bringing Americans to the United States from the Middle East, and additional flights were being arranged for locations across the region, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. The agency provided no details on the number of passengers aboard the flight, the countries they were leaving or the departure and arrival times of the flight.

Trump fires Kristi Noem as homeland secretary after storm over shootings, spending

U.S. President Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday after months of controversy, including the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers in Minneapolis and lawmakers' questions over a $220 million advertising contract. The Republican president will tap Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin to replace her by the end of the month, he said on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. The appointment would require U.S. Senate confirmation.

Suit seeks to undo Trump approval of ByteDance TikTok US asset sale

Donald Trump and his attorney general were sued on Thursday by retail investors in two social media rivals of TikTok seeking to reverse the U.S. president's approval of a deal by the company's Chinese owner ByteDance to form a majority American-owned joint venture. The lawsuit, the first legal challenge to the deal, argues that Trump's approval last year violated requirements set out in a 2024 divestiture law. Two California residents who hold shares in Alphabet ⁠and Meta Platforms sued, backed by a group ​called the Public Integrity Project.

Republican lawmaker urges Bessent to guard against Chinese investment

Reviving market access to Chinese industrial firms would undercut U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to rebuild American manufacturing, the head of a ⁠congressional committee on China warned Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as Trump prepares to visit Beijing for trade talks. Chinese foreign direct investment into the U.S. has fallen dramatically in recent years as U.S. officials talk about the need to "de-risk" the United States' economy, though some media reports have suggested the two sides are looking at ways to revive reciprocal investment.

Ex-Marine injured while protesting Iran war vows to continue campaign for US Senate

Brian McGinnis, a former Marine who was injured while protesting the U.S. and Israel's strikes on Iran, vowed on Thursday to continue his campaign for the U.S. Senate as a Green Party candidate. McGinnis, who is running for Senate in North Carolina, was injured on Wednesday in a struggle with U.S. Capitol Police and Republican Senator Tim Sheehy during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing.

Trump sends Fed chair Warsh nomination to Senate

President Donald Trump on Wednesday officially nominated former Federal ⁠Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh to be the U.S. central bank's next chair, the White House said, putting the president one step closer to installing a rate-cut-friendly Fed chief. But there are big hurdles both to Warsh's path back to the Fed and, once confirmed as Fed chair, his way forward to delivering the rate cuts Trump wants.

US Democrats working on bill to rein in prediction markets after Iran bets

U.S. Democratic lawmakers Representative Mike Levin and Senator Chris Murphy are working on a bill to rein in prediction markets after well-timed bets ahead of the U.S.-Israeli air strikes in Iran stoked concerns over the legality and ethics of such trades, Levin told Reuters. While the effort is unlikely to become law in the near future, it intensifies pressure on the likes of Polymarket and Kalshi amid growing concerns wagers on the platforms create ​incentives to foment conflict and disclose classified information.

US Senator Warren targets US ammunition sales linked to Mexican cartels

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren will introduce legislation on Thursday to stop a U.S. Army-owned ammunition plant from selling military-grade bullets to civilians, asserting that some are being diverted to arm Mexican drug cartels and have been used in more than a dozen American mass shootings. The Stop Militarizing Our Streets Act, co-sponsored by Senator Andy Kim and Representatives Robert Garcia and Jamie Raskin, would prohibit Pentagon contractors from selling military-grade assault weapons and ammunition to civilians.

Twenty-four US states file lawsuit to stop Trump’s latest global tariffs

A group of 24 U.S. states sued President Donald ⁠Trump's administration on Thursday in the first legal challenge to his newly imposed 10% global tariffs, alleging that the president cannot sidestep a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated most of his previous tariffs on imported goods by citing new legal authority. The Democratic-led states, including New York, California and Oregon, argue the new tariffs, which Trump announced immediately after the high court ruling on February 20, are also illegal. The tariffs were imposed for 150 days under the Trade Act of 1974, which is meant to address short-term monetary emergencies, not routine trade deficits that arise when a wealthy nation like the United States imports more than it exports, according to the states' lawsuit filed in the New York-based U.S. Court of International Trade.

Kennedy's new US autism panel to examine potential causes

A U.S. autism advisory board remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to include vaccine skeptics aims to steer federal research spending toward investigating causes of ⁠the condition, as ​well as other issues like co-occurring medical disorders, according to some new panel members. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has suggested the inoculations cause autism, contrary to scientific evidence, reset the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee in January with 21 new public members. More than a third of the new committee members have also promoted the debunked link between vaccines and autism.

Pakistani man says Iran forced him into plot to kill Trump, media say

A Pakistani man accused of planning to kill President Donald Trump told jurors on Wednesday that he did not willingly work with Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to devise the plot, media said. The Justice Department accused Asif Merchant of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan targeting Trump and other U.S. politicians in retaliation for Washington's killing of the Corps' top commander, Qassem Soleimani.

Top House Republicans call on Gonzales to end reelection bid over sex allegations

Top Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Representative Tony Gonzales on Thursday to drop his reelection bid, a day after a congressional ethics panel announced it would investigate allegations he had an affair with a former staff member who later died by suicide. "Leadership has asked Congressman Gonzales to withdraw from his race for reelection," said House Speaker Mike Johnson and three members of his leadership team, in a joint statement.

Pentagon identifies two soldiers killed in Iran war

The Pentagon on Wednesday identified two more soldiers who were killed in the war against ⁠Iran. The two Army Reserve soldiers died on Sunday in a drone attack on a U.S. military facility in Port Shuaiba, Kuwait that also killed four other reservists.

Iran crisis tests Trump standing with young men who helped power 2024 win

When Michael Leary learned the United States had struck Iran, he questioned whether the move honored the "America First" pledge that earned his vote for President Donald Trump and feared it could pull the country into another Middle East quagmire. Yet the 19-year-old student said he welcomed news of the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was not ready to condemn Trump's decision, expressing hope the joint operation with Israel would be swift and spare American lives.

Analysis-Crypto ⁠bill hits new impasse, raising doubts over its future

Talks on landmark crypto legislation have hit a new impasse after banks said they could not back a compromise pushed by the White House, a development that ⁠cast doubt on whether the bill will pass this year and sparked criticism from President Donald Trump who accused lenders of trying to undermine it. Trump, who courted crypto cash on the campaign trail and whose family has profited from its own token, has prioritized crypto reform during his second administration. On Tuesday evening, he took to his Truth Social platform to call out the banking industry. "We are not going to allow them to undermine our powerful Crypto Agenda," he posted.

US labor market holding steady; worker productivity still strong in Q4

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits was unchanged last week and layoffs dropped sharply in February, consistent with stable labor market conditions. While other data from the Labor Department on Thursday showed worker productivity slowed in the fourth quarter, the trend remained strong, helping to curb growth in labor costs in 2025. Labor market stability and rising inflation risks from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran reinforced economists' views that the Federal Reserve was in no rush to resume cutting interest rates.

Airline and travel groups warn of risks to ‌air traffic as partial shutdown persists

Groups representing major U.S. airlines and travel groups warned on Thursday that an ongoing partial government shutdown could snarl ‌air traffic as the busy U.S. spring break travel season nears. Funding for the Homeland Security Department lapsed on February 13 after Congress failed to reach a deal on immigration enforcement reforms demanded by Democrats. That halted operational funding for several government agencies, including the Transportation Security Administration.

Britney Spears arrested on suspicion of DUI

Singer Britney Spears was arrested Wednesday night in Ventura County, ​California, on suspicion of driving under the influence, the California Highway Patrol has confirmed to Reuters. A representative for Spears did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.