(Reuters) - President Donald Trump capped a frenzied first week back in office with a stop in Las Vegas on Saturday to talk about cutting taxes on tips, a 2024 campaign promise he made in the gambling and hospitality hub.
Trump took the stage before cheering supporters at the Circa Resort and Casino in front of a large banner reading "No Tax on Tips" and said economic confidence was soaring in the United States.
"America's decline is over," he said at the start of his remarks, echoing themes from his inauguration remarks earlier in the week.
Since taking office on Monday, the new Republican president reversed a myriad of policies put in place by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and moved to fulfill his vow of remaking and shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
In visits on Friday to disaster areas in North Carolina and California, Trump pledged federal aid to help those states recover from hurricanes and wildfires after floating an idea to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Las Vegas, Trump doubled down on a less controversial proposal: his pledge to end taxation of income from tips, a proposal he first made in June as he courted service workers in the presidential swing state of Nevada. The tip-heavy hospitality industry comprises more than a fifth of all jobs in the state.
"Your tips will be 100 percent yours," Trump said, joking that he would go after the same workers for not reporting their tipped income over the last 10 years.
Trump said that a "young beautiful waitress" had given him the idea for the policy proposal and joked that that was the extent of his research on the issue.
His Democratic opponent in 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris, also pledged to do away with taxes on tips, following in Trump's footsteps. Her campaign said the proposal would require legislation by Congress. Trump won the state.
Michael McDonald, Nevada Republican Party chairman, said the idea is attractive to people in the state facing high prices for essential goods like food and gas.
"He cares about the no tax on tips or Social Security. That was something we brought to the community, and everybody loved it because we’re all hurting," McDonald told local television after welcoming Trump on Friday night.
The proposals Trump made on the campaign trail - from extending his 2017 tax cuts to abolishing tax on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits - could add $7.5 trillion to the nation's debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Trump is pushing a plan to explicitly use revenue from higher tariffs on imported goods to help pay for extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts, an unprecedented shift likely to face opposition from Republican budget hawks concerned about the reliability and durability of tariff revenue.
Days before he returned to office, some of his Republican allies in Congress warned that Trump's aggressive tax-cut agenda could fall victim to signs of worry in the bond market.
At a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Republicans in the House of Representatives aired concerns that the estimated $4 trillion cost over the next 10 years of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts could undermine the U.S. government's ability to service its $36 trillion in debt, which is growing at a pace of $2 trillion a year.
U.S. President Donald Trump's order halting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has led the Air Force to suspend course instruction on a documentary about the first Black airmen in the U.S. military, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, a U.S. official said on Saturday.
The famed Black aviators included 450 pilots who fought overseas in segregated units during World War Two. Their success in combat helped pave the way for President Harry Truman's decision to desegregate the armed forces in 1948.
Another video about civilian women pilots trained by the U.S. military during World War Two, known as "Women Air Force Service Pilots," or WASPs, was also pulled, the official said.
The Air Force did not directly comment on the decision, which was confirmed by an official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a series of executive orders seeking to dismantle DEI programs since he took office on Monday.
DEI programs seek to promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, and other traditionally underrepresented groups. Civil rights advocates argue such programs, generally backed by Democrats, are needed to address longstanding inequities and structural racism.
But they have become a rallying cry for conservatives who argue that race- and gender-focused initiatives are inherently discriminatory and fail to prioritize merit.
Reuters reported on Friday that new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has told lawmakers he opposes the use of race as a factor when evaluating candidates for elite U.S. military academies.
Trump's administration and its backers in Congress argue that the U.S. military needs also to be purged of generals who support DEI initiatives, which they say are a distraction to war fighting.
The U.S. official said the video on the Tuskegee Airmen and other historical materials had been pulled as the Air Force conducts a review of course curriculum at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where new recruits get basic training.
The official stressed that the videos were not specifically targeted but were part of the curriculum that has been suspended pending review.
For its part, the Air Force said in a statement that it is committed to carrying out Trump's orders.
"The Department of the Air Force will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives," an Air Force spokesperson said.
Donald Trump has been in office for five days, and yet he has already imposed his will on Washington with ruthless speed and efficiency, showing that even his most radical campaign promises were far from just bluster.
The Republican president has taken the first steps toward fulfilling his vow of remaking a federal bureaucracy he believes was hostile to him during his 2017-2021 presidency, reassigning or firing hundreds of civil servants in simultaneous moves against a swath of agencies.
He has rushed the military to the southern border, fired the head of the U.S. Coast Guard, and challenged decades of constitutional law with a series of wide-ranging executive orders - 26 of them issued within hours of taking office - that cover everything from environmental regulations to America's citizenship rules.
In perhaps the most audacious move of all, he pardoned about 1,500 supporters who took part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the global symbol of American democracy.
Trump's allies have compared his shock-and-awe opening foray to a special forces raid that has caught federal workers, unions, advocacy group,s and even the media off-guard in its scope.
They credit the meticulous, years-long work of conservative allies who have spent much of Trump's time out of office drafting detailed policy plans that would allow him to hit the ground running.
"This is the beachhead team taking over the federal government," Steve Bannon, who served as the White House chief strategist during Trump's first term and is close to many of Trump's core policy advisers, told Reuters.
Trump's opponents say he is distorting the U.S. Constitution and expanding the limits of executive power beyond its intended limit. They also say Trump's opening moves show he is less interested in uniting the country than in radically transforming it - and in many cases exacting vengeance.
In one of his opening moves, Trump removed the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence officials who attributed unflattering media reports about former President Joe Biden's son Hunter to a Russian influence operation.
Trump also stripped three former national security officials of their security details, even in the face of credible threats from Iran. His aides found time to remove the portrait of one of his harshest critics, General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from a Pentagon hallway.
He purged the White House National Security Council of career officials who were seen by Trump's team as insufficiently loyal to the president. The move allows him to import loyalists into over 100 national security roles.
"He is clearly not a man who discards his grudges easily," said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has worked in and out of government for over 40 years.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
YEARS IN THE MAKING
Even Trump's foes say the last five days represent a stunning contrast to his first term when infighting and poor preparation scuttled many of his most ambitious policy initiatives.
"In terms of just the scope of all this and the speed, his team has shown the results of extraordinary preparation," said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian and former director of the Nixon presidential library.
Many of Trump's policies dovetail with those advocated by "Project 2025," a consortium of conservative organizations that has spent more than two years drafting policies in anticipation of Trump's possible return.
Trump distanced himself from the project last year, saying he knew nothing about it, even though many former aides were deeply involved. But its influence on his new White House operation is all too clear.
Project 2025 advocated for the purge of career officials at the National Security Council.
Another policy pushed by the project that Trump has already adopted is making potentially hundreds of thousands of civil servants easier to fire by creating a new category of federal worker known as "Schedule F."
Trump has also floated an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that would devolve many of FEMA's functions to the states, another Project 2025 proposal.
"There's been hardcore policy and political people that have believed in Trump ... and started working immediately in 2021 for Trump's return to the White House," Bannon said. "And that's what you're seeing come to fruition."
HEIGHT OF POWER?
Trump's agenda faces roadblocks going forward. The opening weeks of his administration may represent the height of Trump's power, some supporters acknowledge.
Many of Trump's executive orders test the limits of constitutional law. An order to end birthright citizenship - a constitutional doctrine holding that almost everyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen - has already been enjoined by a federal court.
Several other pledges and orders have immediately faced lawsuits from states and advocacy organizations, and the shock and awe of his first week could get mired in litigation that lasts for much of his term.
Trump may face a challenge maintaining the Republicans' narrow congressional majority in the House of Representatives in two years. The party of the incumbent president often loses seats in midterms. If that happens, it would result in the already narrow legislative path closing for Trump altogether.
"Trump has a decisive mandate from the American voters to bring dramatic reforms to Washington," said Mike Davis, a close Trump adviser on judicial matters.
"That political mandate will fade if he doesn't deliver - and deliver fast."
U.S. President Donald Trump's late-night firing of inspectors general at multiple government agencies was criticized as illegal on Saturday by Democrats and others and drew concern from at least one fellow Republican.
In what critics called a late-night purge, Trump fired 17 independent watchdogs on Friday, a person with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, a move that clears the way to replace independent watchdogs with loyalists.
U.S. Senator Adam Schiff, a longtime Democratic antagonist of Trump, said the action was a clear violation of the law.
"Trump wants no accountability for malfeasance in office," Schiff said in a post on platform X. "He is refilling the swamp."
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump defended the move saying "it’s a very common thing to do." He did not say who would be installed in the vacant posts.
The inspectors general at agencies including the departments of State, Defense and Transportation were notified by emails from the White House personnel director that they had been terminated immediately, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
The dismissals, handed out less than a week after Trump took office for his second term, appeared to violate federal law, the independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency said in a letter to the White House on Friday.
The law requires a president to give Congress "substantive rationale, including detailed and case specific reasons" for the dismissals 30 days in advance, the council said in the letter to Sergio Gor, White House personnel director.
Gor's Friday email to the fired inspectors cited "changing priorities" as a reason for the firings, according to the letter, reported by Politico.
"At this point, we do not believe the actions taken are legally sufficient to dismiss Presidentially Appointed, Senate Confirmed Inspectors General," said Council Chair Hannibal Ware, suggesting Gor consult with the White House counsel.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general, said the firings were "plainly illegal."
An inspector general is an independent position that conducts audits and investigations into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse of power.
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, a longtime supporter of inspectors general, said he wanted to know why Trump fired the watchdogs.
"There may be good reason the IGs were fired. We need to know that if so. I'd like further explanation from President Trump," Grassley said in a statement, adding that a detailed 30-day notice of removal was not provided to Congress.
Fellow Republican Senator John Barrasso said he believes Trump will make wise decisions on the inspectors general. "Some of them deserve to be fired," he told Fox News.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the firings "a chilling purge" and a preview of a "lawless approach" by the Trump administration.
Agencies are pressing ahead with orders from Trump, who returned to the presidency on Jan. 20, to reshape the federal bureaucracy by scrapping diversity programs, rescinding job offers and sidelining more than 150 national security and foreign policy officials.
Friday's dismissals spared the Department of Justice inspector general, Michael Horowitz, according to the New York Times. The Washington Post, which was first to report the dismissals, said most were appointees from Trump's 2017-2021 first term.
A source familiar with the issue who spoke on condition of anonymity said among the inspectors general whom Trump has fired is John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. He was terminated on Friday evening even though his operation is due to close in September, said the source.
Many politically appointed leaders of agencies and departments come and go with each administration, but an inspector general can serve under multiple presidents.
During his first term, Trump fired five inspectors general in a two-month period in 2020. This included the State Department inspector general, who had played a role in the president's impeachment proceedings.
Last year, Trump's predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, fired the inspector general of the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board, after an investigation found the official had created a hostile work environment.
In 2022, Congress strengthened protections for inspectors general, making it harder to replace them with hand-picked officials and requiring additional explanations from a president for their removal.