# Trump administration briefing: defending Putin, Columbia cuts and Doge’s power over EPA spending

From Donald Trump’s latest remarks to actions taken against crucial government agencies – key US politics stories from Friday at a glance

Donald Trump has said he finds it easier to work with Russia than  and that Vladimir Putin was “doing what anybody would do” after Russia launched a massive missile and drone strike on Ukraine days after the US cut off vital intelligence and military aid to Kyiv.

“I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards,” Trump said in his latest attack on Kyiv. “In terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier dealing with .

“I think he  wants to get it stopped and settled and I think he’s hitting them harder than he’s been hitting them, and I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now.”

## Trump says it is ‘easier’ to deal with Russia than Ukraine

Donald Trump has said he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine and that Putin “wants to end the war”, days after the US administration cut off military assistance and intelligence to Kyiv.



## Trump administration cancels $400m in funds to Columbia

The president’s administration announced it had canceled $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University in New York because of what it alleges as the college’s repeated failure to protect students from antisemitic harassment.



## EPA: spending $50,000 or more must gain Doge approval

The US Environmental Protection Agency issued new guidance directing that spending items greater than $50,000 now require approval from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, even as Donald Trump began putting some distance between Musk’s reach and the power of government department heads – at least over job cuts.



## Trans women transferred to men’s prisons

Transgender women incarcerated in the US prison system have been transferred to men’s facilities under Donald Trump’s executive order, despite multiple court rulings blocking the president’s policy, according to civil rights lawyers and accounts from behind bars.



## US job market grows but below expectations

The US labor market continued to grow in February, even as threats of mass layoffs in the federal government and uncertainty around Donald Trump’s tariff policies rattle the US economy. Last month 151,000 jobs were added to the economy – but economists had been expecting 170,000 new jobs to be added.



## 26,000 images flagged for deletion in Trump DEI purge

References to a second world war Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and the first women to pass US marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion at the Pentagon.



## What else happened today:

- **** amid “heightened uncertainty about the economic outlook” among businesses, said Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell.

- ** a landmark environmental justice case in Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” region**, marking a blow to clean air advocates in the region.

- ** the US from a global agreement** under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating.

- **A court-appointed lawyer has advised a federal judge to let the Department of Justice drop corruption charges against New York city mayor Eric Adams** but prevent prosecutors from ever reviving the case so it doesn’t hang over him “like the proverbial Sword of Damocles”.
```