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President Nicolas Maduro said Monday that Venezuela foiled a false flag operation by what he called local terrorists to plant explosives at the US embassy in Caracas and exacerbate a dispute between the two countries over drug trafficking.Speaking on his weekly TV program, Maduro said two sources which he did not name “agreed on the possibility that a local terrorist group placed an explosive device at the US embassy in Caracas” in order to aggravate the dispute with Washington. Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuela’s delegation for dialogue with its arch-foe, said earlier that Caracas had warned Washington of “a serious threat” from alleged extremists who “attempted to plant lethal explosives at the US embassy.””We have reinforced security measures at this diplomatic mission,” added Rodriguez.The South American nation’s socialist government often accuses the opposition of plots. Caracas and Washington severed diplomatic ties in 2019, and the US embassy has been deserted, barring a few local employees.Maduro said Monday night, “it is an embassy which is protected, despite all the differences we have had with the governments of the United States.”  Washington has made Venezuela the focal point of its fight against drug trafficking, even though most of the illegal drugs entering the United States originate in, or are shipped through, Mexico.President Donald Trump’s administration has sent warships and planes to the Caribbean region and bombed several small boats off the coast of Venezuela, which it says were carrying drugs bound for the United States.At least 21 people have been killed in the strikes, which Trump claims are halting the flow of drugs across the Caribbean.”We’re stopping drugs at a level that nobody’s ever seen,” he told an audience of US Navy sailors in Virginia on Sunday.Maduro says Trump’s true goal is regime change.Caracas has responded to the “threats” by deploying thousands of troops along Venezuela’s land and sea borders and signing up thousands of members to a civilian militia.The United States did not recognize Maduro’s 2024 re-election, rejected by the Venezuelan opposition and much of the world as a stolen vote.During his first term, Trump tried to dislodge Maduro by recognizing an opposition leader as interim president and imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s all-important oil sector.But Maduro clung to power, with the support of the military.- Machado rumors -For weeks rumors have circulated on social networks that Venezuela’s current opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, in hiding since last year’s election, is sheltering at the US embassy.Her whereabouts have not been confirmed by AFP.Washington has recognized a candidate backed by Machado, former senator Eduardo Gonzalez Urrutia, as Venezuela’s rightful president.The opposition’s tally of ballots from last year’s election showed Gonzalez Urrutia, who had been the favorite to win the vote, easily defeating the unpopular Maduro.Threatened with arrest over his victory claim, Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain late last year.In a video last month, he and Machado backed the US military pressure on the Maduro regime as a “necessary measure” towards the “restoration of popular sovereignty in Venezuela.”

One of this year’s Nobel winners is a leading medical researcher who also offers a shining example of work-life balance — so much so that he might not know he won.Fred Ramsdell was among those honored Monday with a 2025 Nobel Prize in Medicine, but he’s currently “living his best life” on an “off the grid” hiking foray, a spokesperson from his San Francisco-based lab, Sonoma Biotherapeutics, told AFP.Ramsdell shared the prestigious prize with Mary Brunkow of Seattle, Washington and Shimon Sakaguchi of Osaka University in Japan for their discoveries related to the functioning of the immune system.But the laureate’s digital detox means the Nobel committee has been unable to reach him and break the news.Jeffrey Bluestone, a friend of Ramsdell’s and co-founder of the lab, said the researcher deserves credit but he can’t reach him, either.”I have been trying to get a hold of him myself. I think he may be backpacking in the backcountry in Idaho,” Bluestone told AFP.The Nobel committee also hit a roadblock trying to reach Brunkow — both researchers are based on the US West Coast, which is nine hours behind Stockholm — but eventually got ahold of her.”I asked them to, if they have a chance, call me back,” said Thomas Perlmann, secretary-general of the Nobel committee, at the press conference announcing the winners.The three won the prize for research that identified the immune system’s “security guards”, called regulatory T-cells.Their work concerns “peripheral immune tolerance” that prevents the immune system from harming the body, and has led to a new field of research and the development of potential medical treatments now being evaluated in clinical trials.Sakaguchi, 74, made the first key find in 1995, discovering a previously unknown class of immune cells that protect the body from autoimmune diseases.Brunkow, born in 1961 and now a senior project manager at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, and Ramsdell, a 64-year-old senior advisor at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, made the other key discovery in 2001.

President Donald Trump said Monday he would be “happy” to negotiate a deal on health programs with Democrats, but demanded the federal government first be re-opened, as a crippling shutdown entered its second week.Democrats are refusing to provide the handful of votes the ruling Republicans need to reopen federal departments, unless an agreement is reached on extending expiring “Obamacare” health care subsidies and reversing cuts to health programs passed as part of Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill.”With the government out of money since Wednesday, Senate Democrats blocked a House-passed temporary funding bill for a fifth time on Monday evening.The hard line taken by Democrats marks a rare moment of leverage for the opposition party in a period when Trump and his ultra-loyal Republicans control every branch of government and Trump himself is accused of seeking to amass authoritarian-like powers.With funding not renewed, non-critical services are being suspended.Salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees are set to be withheld from Friday, while military personnel could miss their paychecks from October 15.And Trump has upped the ante by threatening to have large numbers of government employees fired, rather than just furloughed — placed on temporary unpaid leave — as is normally done during shutdowns.Republicans are digging in their heels, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling his members not even to report to Congress unless the Democrats cave, insisting any debate over health care be held after re-opening the government.Trump echoed the demand in a social media post Monday evening, but appeared to be more open to future negotiations.”I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” he said on his Truth Social platform.- Shutdown impacts -Earlier, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer challenged Johnson to begin health care talks immediately.”If he’s serious about lowering costs and protecting the health care of the American people, why wait?” he said in a post on X. “Democrats are ready to do it now.”The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which he signed into law on July 4, would strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income families. That figure would be in addition to the four million Americans Democrats say will lose health care next year if Obamacare health insurance subsidies are not extended — while another 24 million Americans will see their premiums double.Republicans argue the expiring health care subsidies have nothing to do with keeping the government open and can be dealt with separately before the end of the year.As the shutdown begins to bite, the Environmental Protection Agency, space agency NASA and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments have been the hardest hit by staff being furloughed — or placed on enforced leave — during the shutdown.  The Transport, Justice, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs Departments are among those that have seen the least effects so far, the contingency plans of each organization show.With members of Congress at home and no formal talks taking place in either chamber, a CBS News poll released Sunday showed the public blaming Republicans by a narrow margin for the gridlock. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday layoffs would begin “if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.” Trump has already sent a steamroller through government since taking office for his second term in January.Spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 200,000 jobs had already been cut from the federal workforce before the shutdown, according to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.

President Donald Trump threatened Monday to use emergency powers against rebellion to deploy more troops into Democratic-led US cities, intensifying his rhetoric as his attempts to mobilize the military face legal challenges.The Republican leader openly mulled use of the Insurrection Act after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily halted a National Guard deployment in Portland, while another judge in Illinois allowed a similar move to proceed for now in Chicago.Both cities have seen surges of federal agents as part of Trump’s mass deportation drive, prompting protests outside immigration processing facilities.”We have an Insurrection Act for a reason. If I had to enact it I would do that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.”If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I would do that.”Illinois officials had filed suit seeking to block the deployment in Chicago, but Judge April Perry, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, declined to issue an immediate temporary restraining order.She scheduled a full hearing on the matter for Thursday and asked the government to inform the court to provide more information.The debate mushroomed after it became known that Republican-led Texas was planning to send 200 of its federalized National Guard troops to Illinois, a move that infuriated Democratic Governor JB Pritzker.”They should stay the hell out of Illinois,” said Pritzker.He also accused federal immigration agents conducting raids in Chicago of “thuggery,” using “excessive force,” and illegally detaining US citizens.- ‘Fear and confusion’ -Trump’s comments about the centuries-old Insurrection Act came just minutes after Pritzker warned that Trump was creating a pre-meditated “escalation of violence” as a pretext to invoke the emergency powers.”The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” Pritzker told a press conference.”Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”Trump over the weekend authorized deployment of 700 National Guard members to Chicago despite the opposition of elected Democratic leaders including Pritzker and the city’s mayor.In their lawsuit, the state Attorney General Kwame Raoul and counsel for Chicago accused Trump of using US troops “to punish his political enemies.””The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” they said.In the press conference with Pritzker, Raoul described such planned deployments to Illinois as “unlawful and unconstitutional, no matter where these forces come from.”Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the plan to send troops to Chicago, claiming that the third-largest US city is “a war zone.”Trump has similarly called Portland “war-ravaged,” but District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block on the Oregon troop deployment, saying “the president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.””This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” wrote Immergut, a Trump appointee.The Trump administration is appealing the ruling, the White House said.A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to US cities.Illinois and Oregon are not the first states to file legal challenges against the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard.California filed suit after Trump sent troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to quell protests sparked by a crackdown on undocumented migrants, with the case still working its way through courts.

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Ghislaine Maxwell, the accomplice of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, of her sex trafficking conviction.The top court rejected Maxwell’s appeal without comment.Maxwell, 63, was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for recruiting underage girls for Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking.The authorities ruled the wealthy financier’s death a suicide, but it has fueled countless conspiracy theories among President Donald Trump’s voter base.Many of Trump’s supporters have been obsessed with the Epstein case for years and have held as an article of faith that “deep state” elites were protecting Epstein associates in the Democratic Party and Hollywood.Trump, a one-time close friend of Epstein, has sought to dampen the continuing political furor over the Epstein case, calling it a “Democrat hoax.”Maxwell had appealed her sex trafficking conviction in New York on the grounds that she should have been protected from prosecution by an agreement secured by Epstein in a 2007 case.Maxwell’s lawyer, David Oscar Markus, said he was “deeply disappointed” that the Supreme Court had declined to hear the case.”But this fight isn’t over,” Markus said in a statement. “Serious legal and factual issues remain, and we will continue to pursue every avenue available to ensure that justice is done.”The Supreme Court’s rejection of Maxwell’s appeal appears to leave a pardon or clemency from Trump as the former British socialite’s only potential avenue for release.Trump was asked by reporters on Monday if he would consider a pardon for Maxwell.”I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it. I don’t know anything about it,” he said, adding that he would have to speak to the Department of Justice.Maxwell, the only former Epstein associate criminally convicted in connection with his activities, was recently interviewed by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer.Following that interview, Maxwell was moved from a prison in Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas.

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear a challenge by a Christian therapist to a Colorado law that bans “conversion therapy” for minors who are questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation.The case was brought by Kaley Chiles, a licensed mental health counselor who argues that the prohibition from holding such conversations with minors is a violation of her First Amendment free speech rights.Colorado’s Minor Conversion Therapy Law, passed in 2019, prohibits licensed mental health professionals from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of their patients under 18 years old.Chiles is represented in the case before the conservative-dominated Supreme Court by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group.In her petition, Chiles’s lawyers said she “believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.””Amidst a nationwide mental-health crisis, many minors struggling with gender dysphoria are seeking the counseling that Kaley Chiles would like to provide,” they said.”They want help aligning their mind and body rather than chasing experimental medical interventions and risking permanent harm.”Yet it is this desperately needed counseling — encouraging words between a licensed counselor and a consenting minor client — that Colorado forbids,” they said.Conversion therapy is banned in more than 20 US states and much of Europe, with both the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association opposed to its use.In its brief with the Supreme Court, Colorado said there is “mounting evidence that conversion therapy is associated with increased depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts.”Two lower courts ruled in favor of Colorado, and Chiles brought her case before the nation’s top court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.President Donald Trump, after taking office, said the government would henceforth only recognize two genders — male and female — and signed an executive order restricting gender transition medical procedures for people under the age of 19.In June, the Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a Tennessee state law banning hormone therapy, puberty blockers and gender transition surgery for minors.The Supreme Court will also hear a challenge this term to state laws in Idaho and West Virginia that ban transgender girls from taking part in girls’ sports — another issue at the heart of the American culture wars.

The US government shutdown entered its second week on Monday, with no sign of a deal between President Donald Trump’s Republicans and Democrats to end the crisis.Democrats are refusing to provide the handful of votes the ruling Republicans need to reopen federal departments, unless an agreement is reached on extending expiring “Obamacare” health care subsidies and reversing some cuts to health programs passed as part of Trump’s signature “One Big Beautiful Bill.”With the government out of money since Wednesday and grinding to a halt, Senate Democrats looked set to vote against a House-passed temporary funding bill for a fifth time.The hard line taken by Democrats marks a rare moment of leverage for the opposition party in a period when Trump and his ultra-loyal Republicans control every branch of government and Trump himself is accused of seeking to amass authoritarian-like powers.With funding not renewed, non-critical services are being suspended.Salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees are set to be withheld from Friday, while military personnel could miss their paychecks from October 15.And Trump has upped the ante by threatening to have large numbers of government employees fired, rather than just furloughed — placed on temporary unpaid leave status — as is normally done during shutdowns.The president said Sunday that workers were already being fired, but White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt walked back the comments a day later, saying he was only “referring to the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed.”Republicans are digging in their heels, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling his members not even to report to Congress unless the Democrats cave, insisting any health care negotiation be held after re-opening the government.”If he’s serious about lowering costs and protecting the health care of the American people, why wait?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a challenge to Johnson on Monday.”Democrats are ready to do it now,” he wrote on X.- Shutdown impacts -The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which he signed into law on July 4, would strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income families. That figure would be in addition to the four million Americans Democrats say will lose health care next year if Obamacare health insurance subsidies are not extended — while another 24 million Americans will see their premiums double.Republicans argue the expiring health care subsidies have nothing to do with keeping the government open and can be dealt with separately before the end of the year.As the shutdown begins to bite, the Environmental Protection Agency, space agency NASA and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments have been the hardest hit by staff being furloughed — or placed on enforced leave — during the shutdown.  The Transport, Justice, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs Departments are among those that have seen the least effects so far, the contingency plans of each organization show.With members of Congress at home and no formal talks taking place in either chamber, a CBS News poll released Sunday showed the public blaming Republicans by a narrow margin for the gridlock. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday layoffs would begin “if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.” Trump has already sent a steamroller through government since taking office for his second term in January.Spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 200,000 jobs had already been cut from the federal workforce before the shutdown, according to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.

The Democratic-led US state of Illinois filed suit on Monday to block President Donald Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago.The lawsuit comes one day after a federal judge in Oregon temporarily blocked the Republican president from sending soldiers to the state’s biggest city, Portland, as part of his crackdown on crime and undocumented migrants.Trump over the weekend authorized the deployment of 700 National Guard soldiers to Chicago despite the opposition of elected Democratic leaders including the mayor and Governor JB Pritzker.In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Illinois, the state Attorney General Kwame Raoul and counsel for Chicago accused Trump of using US troops “to punish his political enemies.””The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor,” they said.”Far from promoting public safety in the Chicago region,” they wrote, Trump’s “provocative and arbitrary actions have threatened to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.””Illinois asks this Court to declare these actions unlawful and enjoin them, immediately as well as permanently,” they added.Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the plan to send troops to Chicago, claiming that the third-largest US city is “a war zone.”Pritzker, responding on CNN, accused Republicans of seeking to “create the war zone, so that they can send in even more troops.”A CBS poll released Sunday found that 58 percent of Americans oppose deploying the National Guard to US cities.But Trump, who spoke last week of using the military for a “war from within,” shows no sign of backing down.On Sunday he claimed, falsely, that “Portland is burning to the ground. It’s insurrectionists all over the place.”- ‘Constitutional law, not martial law’ -Trump’s campaign to use the military on home soil hit a roadblock Saturday in Portland when a federal court ruled the deployment was unlawful.Trump has repeatedly called Portland “war-ravaged,” but District Judge Karin Immergut issued a temporary block on troop deployment, saying “the president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.””This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” wrote Immergut, a Trump appointee.Although Portland has seen scattered attacks on federal officers and property, the administration failed to demonstrate “that those episodes of violence were part of an organized attempt to overthrow the government as a whole,” she said.The Trump administration is appealing the ruling, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday.”With all due respect to that judge, I think her opinion is untethered in reality and in the law,” Leavitt said. “We’re very confident in the president’s legal authority to do this.””The president wants to ensure that our federal buildings and our assets are protected and that’s exactly what he’s trying to do,” she said.Days of tense scenes in Chicago turned violent on Saturday when a federal officer shot a motorist that the Department of Homeland Security said had been armed and rammed one of their vehicles.Illinois and Oregon are not the first states to file legal challenges against the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard.California filed suit after Trump sent troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to quell protests sparked by a crackdown on undocumented migrants.A district court judge ruled it unlawful but the deployment was upheld by an appeals court panel.

The inhalers people depend on to breathe are also warming the planet, producing annual emissions equivalent to more than half a million cars in the United States alone, researchers said Monday in a major new study.Using a national drug database, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard analyzed global warming pollution from three types of inhalers used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) between 2014 and 2024.The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that inhalers used by US patients with commercial insurance and the government-run programs Medicaid and Medicare generated 24.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over the decade.Metered-dose inhalers, or “puffers,” were by far the most damaging, accounting for 98 percent of emissions. They use pressurized canisters containing hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) propellants — potent greenhouse gases — to deliver medication.By contrast, dry powder and soft mist inhalers don’t use propellants. The former rely on a patient’s breath to release medicine, and the latter turn liquid into a fine spray — making both far less harmful to the planet.”Five hundred and thirty thousand cars on the road each year is a lot, and I think this is a really important topic because it’s fixable — there are easy ways to reduce emissions,” lead author William Feldman, a pulmonologist and researcher at UCLA, told AFP.Medically, only a small fraction of patients require metered-dose inhalers. Very young children need spacers — valved chambers that help deliver medicine to the lungs — and these only work with metered-dose devices. Frail older adults with weak lungs may also need puffers because they can’t generate enough inhalation force.”But the vast majority of people could use dry powder or soft mist inhalers,” Feldman said, noting that countries such as Sweden and Japan use alternative inhalers without any loss in health outcomes.- Insurance barriers -The slower US uptake of greener inhalers, he added, stems from insurance and market barriers. A dry-powder version of albuterol, the most commonly used inhaler drug, exists but is often not covered by insurance, making it more expensive. Another drug, budesonide-formoterol, is widely sold in dry-powder form in Europe, which is not available in the United States.Feldman emphasized that the goal of the research is not to blame patients but to highlight the need for policy and pricing reform.”We absolutely do not want to stigmatize patients with asthma and COPD,” he said.”I think it’s incumbent upon us as a society to get those medications to the patients in a sustainable way, and that ultimately falls to the highest levels.”A related JAMA commentary authored by Alexander Rabin of the University of Michigan and others echoed that insurers and policymakers must ensure lower-emission inhalers are affordable and accessible for all.They warned that several new low-global-warming metered-dose inhalers are expected to launch in the US as high-priced brand-name products, “raising the risk that patients without robust insurance coverage…could be left behind.”

The US government shutdown entered its second week on Monday, with no sign of a deal between President Donald Trump’s Republicans and Democrats to end the crisis. Democrats are refusing to provide the handful of votes the ruling Republicans need to reopen federal departments unless the two sides can agree on extending expiring “Obamacare” health care subsidies.With the government out of money since Wednesday and grinding to a halt, Senate Democrats looked set to vote against a House-passed temporary funding bill for a fifth time.The hard line taken by Democrats marks a rare moment of leverage for the opposition party in a period when Trump and his ultra-loyal Republicans control every branch of government — and Trump himself is accused of seeking to amass authoritarian-like powers.With funding not renewed, non-critical services are being suspended.Salaries for hundreds of thousands of public sector employees are set to be withheld from Friday, while military personnel could miss their paychecks from October 15.And Trump has radically upped the ante by threatening to fire large numbers of government employees, rather than place them on temporary unpaid leave status as has been done in every other shutdown over the years.Republicans are digging in their heels, with House Speaker Mike Johnson telling his members not even to come to Congress unless the Democrats cave.”House Republicans think protecting the health care of everyday Americans is less important than their vacation,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement.”We strongly disagree.”- Red herring -But Johnson said health funding was a red herring Democrats had wielded to force a shutdown, claiming to have addressed the issue in a sprawling domestic policy bill signed into law by Trump in July.”Republicans are the party working around the clock every day to fix health care. It’s not talking points for us. We’ve done it,” Johnson told reporters at the US Capitol.The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” would in fact strip 11 million Americans of health care coverage, mainly through cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income families. That figure would be in addition to the four million Americans Democrats say will lose health care next year if Obamacare health insurance subsidies are not extended — while another 24 million Americans will see their premiums double.Republicans argue the expiring health care subsidies are nothing to do with keeping the government open and can be dealt with separately before the end of the year.As the shutdown begins to bite, the Environmental Protection Agency, space agency NASA and the Education, Commerce and Labor departments have been the hardest hit by staff being furloughed — or placed on enforced leave — during the shutdown.  The Transport, Justice, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs Departments are among those that have seen the least effects so far, the contingency plans of each organization show.With members of Congress at home and no formal talks taking place in either chamber, a CBS News poll released Sunday showed the public blaming Republicans by a narrow margin for the gridlock. Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday layoffs would begin “if the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere.” Trump has already sent a steamroller through government since taking office for his second term in January.Spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, 200,000 jobs had already been cut from the federal workforce before the shutdown, according to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service.