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President Donald Trump said Monday evening that Microsoft is among the U.S. companies looking to take control of TikTok to help the popular app avert an effective ban that could kick in in April.
“I would say yes,” Trump told reporters when asked if Microsoft was one of the companies interested in helping to bring about a new ownership of TikTok, a requirement set by Congress to keep the app functioning in the U.S.
Trump added that other companies were also interested in purchasing TikTok, but wouldn’t provide a list.
“I like bidding wars because you make your best deals,” Trump said as he spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One while flying back to Washington from Miami, where Republican House members were holding a conference.
Microsoft declined to comment. Representatives for TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In one of his first acts in office last week, Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find new ownership that satisfies the government by 75 days, to April 4 from January 19.
The president has said that he’s looking for the ultimate purchaser to give the U.S. a 50% stake in the company owned by China-based ByteDance. But the details remain murky, and whether he’s proposing control of the app by the government or another U.S. entity is unclear.
Last week, the artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI presented a new proposal to ByteDance that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Several other investors — including billionaire Frank McCourt and Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — have publicly expressed their desire to purchase TikTok’s U.S. platform. Trump has also said he’s spoken to “many people” privately about the company.
After the bipartisan law was signed by former President Joe Biden in April, ByteDance said it did not have plans to sell the platform and fought the statute in court for months. China also rebuked Washington over the divestment push, though more recently it appears to be softening its stance.
In media interviews last week, Bill Ford, the chairman of the global investing firm General Atlantic and a ByteDance board member, said the company is prepared to engage with the Trump administration and Chinese officials to find a solution that keeps TikTok available. He also floated the idea that there could be a solution short of a full divesture by ByteDance.
Lawmakers and officials in both parties have raised national security concerns about Chinese ownership and potential manipulation of the immensely popular platform, which is used by more than 170 million U.S. users.
Trump was in favor of a TikTok ban before he reversed his position last year. He credits the platform with helping him win more young voters during the recent presidential election.
Microsoft, along with Walmart, made a failed bid for TikTok during Trump’s first term after Trump tried to ban the app. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later described it as the “strangest thing I’ve ever worked on.”
Chrystia Freeland, the former finance minister who is running to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister, said Monday Canada needs to release a “retaliation list” of goods the country would target if U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on his threat to slap 25% tariffs on Canadian goods.
A list of products worth 200 billion Canadian dollars (US$139 billion) would send a message to U.S. exporters about the harm tariffs would cause them, Freeland said in a statement.
“Being smart means retaliating where it hurts,” she said. “Our counterpunch must be dollar-for-dollar — and it must be precisely and painfully targeted: Florida orange growers, Wisconsin dairy farmers, Michigan dishwasher manufacturers, and much more.”
“Now is the moment when Canada must make clear to Americans the specific costs that will accompany any tariff measures by the Trump administration.”
Trump has said he will use economic coercion to pressure Canada to become the nation’s 51st state. He continues to erroneously cast the U.S. trade deficit with Canada — a natural resource-rich nation that provides the U.S. with commodities like oil — as a subsidy.
Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly $3.6 billion Canadian (US$2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border each day.
John Ries, senior associate dean at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business, said Canada should retaliate against any tariffs but warned against publicizing a list in advance, citing the risk of antagonizing Trump — and making it harder for him to back off on his threats.
“He always wants to win,” said Ries. “He doesn’t want to show any weakness.”
Freeland said Monday that if she wins the leadership race and become prime minister she would also prohibit American companies from bidding on Canadian federal procurement (excluding defense).
She also said she would convene an international summit with the leaders of Mexico, Denmark, Panama, and the president of the European Union to “coordinate a joint response to challenges to our sovereignty and our economies.”
Some lawmakers have suggested Canada could stop energy shipments to the United States, a move opposed by Daniele Smith, the premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta.
Former central banker Mark Carney, who is also running for the Liberal leadership, said over the weekend that cutting off Quebec’s hydro exports to the U.S. should remain an option on the table in a trade fight with Trump.
It was Freeland’s abrupt resignation as finance minister last month that forced Trudeau to say he is resigning as prime minister and party leader.
Trudeau is to remain prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen on March 9.
The next Liberal leader could be the shortest-tenured prime minister in the country’s history. All three opposition parties have vowed to bring down the Liberals’ minority government in a no-confidence vote after parliament resumes on March 24. An election is expected this spring.
The Justice Department said Monday that it had fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of President Donald Trump, moving rapidly to pursue retribution against lawyers involved in the investigations and signaling an early willingness to take action favorable to the president’s personal interests.
The abrupt termination targeting career prosecutors who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s team is the latest sign of upheaval inside the Justice Department and is consistent with the administration’s determination to purge the government of workers it perceives as disloyal to the president.
The norm-shattering move, which follows the reassignment of multiple senior career officials across divisions, was made even though rank-and-file prosecutors by tradition remain with the department across presidential administrations and are not punished by virtue of their involvement in sensitive investigations. The firings are effective immediately.
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” said a statement from a Justice Department official. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda. This action is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government.”
It was not immediately clear which prosecutors were affected by the order, or how many who worked on the investigations into Trump remained with the department as Trump took office last week. It was also not immediately known how many of the fired prosecutors intended to challenge the terminations by arguing that the department had cast aside civil service protections afforded to federal employees.
The action was the latest effort to turn the table on criminal investigations that for years shadowed Trump, resulting in separate indictments that never went to trial and were ultimately abandoned.
On his first day in office, he issued sweeping pardons and sentence commutations to the more than 1,500 supporters charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, a massive clemency grant that benefited even those found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power.
Trump has long sought to exert control over a Justice Department that investigated him both during his first term as well as during the last four years under former Attorney General Merrick Garland. He has repeatedly said he expects loyalty from a law enforcement community trained to put facts, evidence, and the law ahead of politics. He’s moved to put close allies in high-level positions, including replacing his first FBI director, Christopher Wray, with loyalist Kash Patel.
Trump’s pick for attorney general, Pam Bondi, said at her confirmation hearing this month that she would not play politics but did not rule out the potential for investigations into Trump adversaries like Smith.
Smith resigned from the department earlier this month after submitting a two-volume report on the twin investigations into Trump’s efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. At least one other key member of the team, Jay Bratt, also retired from the department this month after serving as a lead prosecutor in the classified documents case.
Both the election interference case and the classified documents prosecution were withdrawn by Smith’s team following Trump’s presidential win in November, in keeping with longstanding Justice Department policy.
The firings were first reported by Fox News.
U.S. President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders on Monday to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) from the military, reinstate thousands of troops who were kicked out for refusing COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, and take aim at transgender troops.
Earlier on Monday, Pete Hegseth, who narrowly secured enough votes to become defense secretary, referred to the names of Confederate generals that were once used for two key bases during his remarks to reporters as he entered the Pentagon on his first full day on the job.
Trump signed the executive orders while flying back from Miami to Washington D.C.
One of the executive orders signed by Trump said that expressing a "gender identity" different from an individual's sex at birth did not meet military standards.
While the order banned the use of "invented" pronouns in the military, it did not answer basic questions including whether transgender soldiers currently serving in the military would be allowed to stay and, if not, how they would be removed.
Trump's plans have been heavily criticized by advocacy groups, which say his actions would be illegal.
"President Trump has made clear that a key priority for his administration is driving transgender people back into the closet and out of public life altogether," Joshua Block, with the ACLU, said earlier on Monday.
During his first term, Trump announced that he would ban transgender troops from serving in the military. He did not fully follow through with that ban - his administration froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
Biden overturned the decision when he took office in 2021.
The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, Department of Defense data shows. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands.
When Trump announced his first ban in 2017, he said the military needed to focus on "decisive and overwhelming victory" without being burdened by the "tremendous medical costs and disruption" of having transgender personnel.
INTERNAL FOCUS
Hegseth has promised to bring major changes to the Pentagon and he has made eliminating DEI from the military a top priority.
Trump's executive order on ending DEI in the military said service academies would be required to teach "that America and its founding documents remain the most powerful force for good in human history."
The Air Force said on Sunday that it will resume instruction of trainees using a video about the first Black airmen in the U.S. military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, which has passed a review to ensure compliance with Trump's ban on DEI initiatives.
Hegseth was warmly greeted on the steps of the Pentagon by the top U.S. military officer, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, whom Hegseth criticized in his latest book. Asked if he might fire Brown, Hegseth joked that he was standing right next to him.
"I’m standing with him right now. I look forward to working with him," as he patted Brown on the back.
Reuters has previously reported about the possibility of mass firing among top brass, something Hegseth repeatedly refused to rule out during his confirmation process.
Hegseth referred to Fort Moore and Fort Liberty by their previous names, Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, while speaking with reporters.
The names honouring Confederate officers were changed under former President Joe Biden as part of an effort to reexamine U.S. history and the Confederate legacy.
"I'm thinking about the guys and gals in Guam, Germany, Fort Benning and Fort Bragg," Hegseth said.
Much of Hegseth's focus at the Pentagon could be internal to the military, including making good on Trump's executive order on bringing back troops discharged for refusing COVID vaccines.
Thousands of service members were removed from the military after the Pentagon made the vaccine mandatory in 2021.
MISSILE DEFENSE FOR U.S.
Trump also signed an executive order that "mandated a process to develop an ‘American Iron Dome’."
The short-range Iron Dome air defense system was built by Israel's Rafael Advanced Defense Systems with U.S. backing, and was built to intercept rockets fired by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza towards Israel.
Each truck-towed unit fires radar-guided missiles to blow up short-range threats such as rockets, mortars, and drones in midair.
The system determines whether a rocket is on course to hit a populated area. If not, the rocket is ignored and allowed to land harmlessly.
Any such effort would take years to implement in the United States.
The White House claimed victory in a showdown with Colombia over accepting flights of deported migrants from the U.S. on Sunday, hours after President Donald Trump threatened steep tariffs on imports and other sanctions on the longtime U.S. partner.
Long close partners in anti-narcotics efforts, the U.S. and Colombia clashed Sunday over the deportation of migrants and imposed tariffs on each other’s goods in a show of what other countries could face if they intervene in the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The White House held up the episode as a warning to other nations who might seek to impede his plans.
Earlier, the U.S. president had ordered visa restrictions, 25% tariffs on all Colombian incoming goods, which would be raised to 50% in one week, and other retaliatory measures sparked by President Gustavo Petro’s decision to reject two Colombia-bound U.S. military aircraft carrying migrants after Petro accused Trump of not treating immigrants with dignity during deportation. Petro also announced a retaliatory 25% increase in Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods.
Trump said the measures were necessary because Petro’s decision “jeopardized” national security in the U.S. by blocking the deportation flights.
“These measures are just the beginning,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States.”
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a late Sunday statement that the “Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay.”
Leavitt said the tariff orders will be “held in reserve, and not signed.” But Leavitt said Trump would maintain visa restrictions on Colombian officials and enhanced customs inspections of goods from the country, “until the first planeload of Colombian deportees is successfully returned.”
The Colombian government late Sunday said it considered “overcome” the episode with the Trump administration and Petro reposted the statement from the White House on X.
“We have overcome the impasse with the United States government,” said Colombian Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo. “We will continue to receive Colombians who return as deportees, guaranteeing them decent conditions as citizens subject to rights.”
Murillo added that the South American country’s presidential aircraft is available to facilitate the return of migrants who were to arrive hours earlier on the U.S. military airplanes.
Earlier Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he was authorizing the visa restrictions on Colombian government officials and their families “who were responsible for the interference of U.S. repatriation flight operations.” They were being imposed on top of the State Department’s move to suspend the processing of visas at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia’s capital, Bogota.
Petro had said earlier that his government would not accept flights carrying migrants deported from the U.S. until the Trump administration creates a protocol that treats them with “dignity.” Petro made the announcement in two X posts, one of which included a news video of migrants reportedly deported to Brazil walking on a tarmac with restraints on their hands and feet.
“A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves,” Petro said. “That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants... In civilian planes, without being treated like criminals, we will receive our fellow citizens.”
After Trump’s earlier tariff threat, Petro said in a post on X that he had ordered the “foreign trade minister to raise import tariffs from the U.S. by 25%.”
Colombia has traditionally been the U.S.’s top ally in Latin America. But their relationship has strained since Petro, a former guerrilla, became Colombia’s first leftist president in 2022 and sought distance from the U.S.
Colombia accepted 475 deportation flights from the U.S. from 2020 to 2024, fifth behind Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. It accepted 124 deportation flights in 2024.
Colombia is also among the countries that last year began accepting U.S.-funded deportation flights from Panama.
The U.S. government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press regarding aircraft and protocols used in deportations to Colombia.
“This is a clear message we are sending that countries must accept repatriation flights,” a senior administration official told AP. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
Rubio in a statement said Petro “canceled his authorization” for the flights when the aircraft were in the air.
Colombians emerged in recent years as a major presence on the U.S. border with Mexico, aided in part by a visa regime that allows them to easily fly to Mexico and avoid trekking through the treacherous Darien Gap. They ranked fourth with 127,604 arrests for illegal crossings during 12 months through September, behind Mexicans, Guatemalans, and Venezuelans.
Mexico hasn’t imposed visa restrictions on Colombians, as they have on Venezuelans, Ecuadorean,s and Peruvians.
Petro’s government in a statement later announced that the South American country’s presidential aircraft had been made available to facilitate the return of migrants who were to arrive hours earlier on the U.S. military airplanes and guarantee them “dignified conditions.”
As part of a flurry of actions to make good on Trump’s campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration, his government is using active-duty military to help secure the border and carry out deportations.
Two U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes carrying migrants removed from the U.S. touched down early Friday in Guatemala. That same day, Honduras received two deportation flights carrying a total of 193 people.
Colombia is the U.S.’s fourth-largest overseas supplier of crude oil, shipping about 209,000 barrels of oil per day last year, although booming domestic production has reduced the U.S.’ dependence on foreign oil. The South American country is also the U.S.’s largest supplier of fresh-cut flowers.
At least 56 senior officials in the top U.S. aid and development agency were placed on leave Monday amid an investigation into an alleged effort to thwart President Donald Trump’s orders.
A current official and a former official at the U.S. Agency for International Development confirmed the reason given for the move Monday. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Several hundred contractors based in Washington and elsewhere also were laid off, the officials said.
It follows Trump’s executive order last week that directed a sweeping 90-day pause on most U.S. foreign assistance disbursed through the State Department.
As a result of the freeze, thousands of U.S.-funded humanitarian, development, and security programs worldwide had stopped work or were preparing to do so. Without funds to pay staff, aid organizations were laying off hundreds of employees.
An internal USAID notice sent late Monday and obtained by The Associated Press said new acting administrator Jason Gray had identified “several actions within USAID that appear to be designed to circumvent the President’s Executive Orders and the mandate from the American people.”
“As a result, we have placed a number of USAID employees on administrative leave with full pay and benefits until further notice while we complete our analysis of these actions,” Gray wrote.
Trump has signed many executive orders since taking office a week ago, but the notice did not say which orders the employees were suspected of violating.
The senior agency officials put on leave were experienced employees who had served in multiple administrations, including Trump’s, the former USAID official said.
Before those officials were removed from the job Monday, they were scrambling to help U.S.-funded aid organizations cope with the new funding freeze and seek waivers to continue life-saving activities, from getting clean water to war-displaced people in Sudan to continuing to monitor for bird flu globally, the former official said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has specifically exempted only emergency food programs and military aid to Israel and Egypt from the freeze on foreign assistance.
The Trump administration and GOP lawmakers, many of them skeptical of the need for foreign aid and eager to see other countries pay more, say they will review each foreign assistance program to determine whether it is directly in U.S. interests and eliminate those that are deemed wasteful or liberal social engineering.
Politico first reported the USAID officials being put on leave.