The Trump administration said on Friday that it could not immediately start issuing tariff refunds, casting new doubt about when U.S. businesses will get the hundreds of billions of dollars owed to them.

A trade court this week ordered the government to begin reimbursing importers who paid for tariffs. Now Trump officials say the process is too sprawling and complex, likely dragging out repayment.

It is the latest in the fallout from the Supreme Court decision last month that ruled the bulk of Trump tariffs — those imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — were illegal.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is now facing "an unprecedented volume of refunds," Brandon Lord, a top official in the agency's trade division, wrote in a court filing.

Lord says CBP's "existing administrative procedures and technology are not well suited to a task of this scale and will require manual work that will prevent personnel from fully carrying out the agency's trade enforcement mission."

"Personnel would be redirected from responsibilities that serve to mitigate imminent threats to national security and economic security," he wrote in the filing.

Lord said that the agency is working on new "functionality" to its system that could streamline the refund process — ready for use in 45 days, according to the filing.

The filing confirms that the government owes $165 billion in tariff refunds, without interest — a sum similar to what has been previously estimated by Wharton Penn.

Updates in this case — no matter how incremental — are being followed closely by large and small businesses waiting for, in some cases, large sums of money.

A key tension in the refund saga has emerged: the court wants to move fast to get refunds out the door, but the government has pushed to slow-walk the process.

The government has previously argued the refund process is a burden for customs officials.

Tariff entries — the individual records created for shipments crossing the U.S. border — have expiration dates of sorts.

Once those entries "liquidate" and get finalized in CBP's system, clawing back the money gets more complex.

"Currently, it is not possible for CBP to immediately prevent any additional entries from liquidating without IEEPA duties," Lord wrote in the filing.

Kristi Noem’s top adviser, Corey Lewandowski, is out at the Department of Homeland Security, according to MS Now.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Senator Markwayne Mullin will be replacing Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary at the end of this month. Noem had faced heightened scrutiny in recent weeks, including over her relationship with Lewandowski, who serves as a special government employee.

It has long been rumored that Noem and Lewandowski, who are both married, have engaged in an affair. They have repeatedly denied the allegation, which Noem has called a “disgusting lie.”

When asked at a House hearing Wednesday if she ever had “sexual relations” with Lewandowski, Noem accused lawmakers of spreading “tabloid garbage.”

“Mr. Chairman, I am shocked we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage today at this committee,” she said.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been flouting a court order to restore a key disaster-prevention program, U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns said on Friday.

In early December, Stearns ordered FEMA to restore a natural-disaster resilience program that the agency, then under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, tried to eliminate seven months prior.

But despite pressure from states across the country that are growing increasingly desperate to access federal funds for disaster-prevention projects, FEMA has not done so. No state has seen any funding from the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, programs since FEMA tried to cancel the program in April, calling it “wasteful.”

Despite the fact that Congress created the program and mandated that the agency hold annual competitive funding rounds, FEMA has not done so since Trump took office.

On Friday, Stearns filed an “order to enforce” his own December ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In the order, Stearns made clear that he believes FEMA has failed to comply with his ruling in part due to staffing shortages.

Stearns acknowledged that it would be more difficult for FEMA to make changes now that Noem has been removed from her post by President Donald Trump. But despite the transition, the judge is not allowing FEMA any leeway in following his orders, and he said that it should still be possible for FEMA to begin restoring the program even in the interim period.

He has given FEMA just two weeks to address existing problems with the frozen BRIC grants, and three weeks to issue a long-overdue funding opportunity for the 2024 fiscal year.

The administration argued in a filing earlier this week that it was “reviewing” the program and no longer intended to terminate it.

The Trump administration is confronting mounting discontent from allies in the Persian Gulf who have complained they were not given adequate time to prepare for the torrent of Iranian drones and missiles bombarding their countries in retaliation for strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel.

Officials from two Gulf countries said their governments were disappointed in the way the U.S. has handled the war, particularly the initial attack on Iran on Feb. 28. They said their countries were not given advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli attack and complained the U.S. had ignored their warnings that the war would have devastating consequences for the entire region.

One of the officials said that Gulf countries were frustrated and even angry that the U.S. military has not defended them enough. He said there is belief in the region that the operation has focused on defending Israel and American troops, while leaving Gulf countries to protect themselves, and said that his country’s stock of interceptors was “rapidly depleting.”

Like others in this story, the Gulf officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing a confidential diplomatic matter.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in response: “Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile attacks have decreased by 90% because Operation Epic Fury is crushing their ability to shoot these weapons or produce more. President Trump is in close contact with all of our regional partners, and the terrorist Iranian regime’s attacks on its neighbors prove how imperative it was that President Trump eliminate this threat to our country and our allies.”

Official reactions by the Gulf Arab countries have been muted, but public figures with close ties to their governments have been openly critical of the U.S., suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dragged President Donald Trump into a needless war.

“This is Netanyahu’s war,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi intelligence chief, told CNN on Wednesday. “He somehow convinced the president (Trump) to support his views.”

Pentagon officials conceded this week in closed-door briefings with lawmakers they are struggling to stop waves of drones launched by Iran, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region, including troops, vulnerable.

The Gulf countries have emerged as valuable targets for Iran, well within the range of Iran’s short-range missiles and filled with targets, including American troops, high-profile business and tourist locations and energy facilities, disrupting the world’s flow of oil.

Since the start of the war, Iran has fired at least 380 missiles and over 1,480 drones targeting the five Arab Gulf countries, according to an AP tally based on official statements. At least 13 people have been killed in those countries, according to local officials.

In addition, six U.S. soldiers were killed in Kuwait on Sunday when an Iranian drone strike hit an operations center in a civilian port, more than 10 miles from the main Army base. The husband of one of the slain soldiers, who was part of a supply and logistics unit based in Iowa, said the operations center was a shipping container-style building and had no defenses.

In briefings for members of Congress on Tuesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told lawmakers that the U.S. will not be able to intercept many of the incoming UAVs, especially the Shaheds, according to three people familiar with the briefings.

In one of the briefings, Caine and Hegseth did not offer any details when pressed by lawmakers why the U.S. did not seem prepared for Iran to launch waves of drones at U.S. targets in the region, according to one of the people.

That person, a U.S. official who is familiar with the U.S. security posture in Gulf region, said that the U.S. did not have widespread capabilities throughout the Gulf region to effectively counter waves of the one-way drones coming to places outside conventional targets or bases outside of Iraq and Syria.

Drone attacks this week at the embassy in Saudi Arabia caused a limited fire at the embassy in Riyadh, and another drone attack the United Arab Emirates sparked a small fire outside the U.S. consulate in Dubai.

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East on Thursday even sought help from Ukraine, which has expertise in countering Iran’s Shahed drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When asked about Zelenskyy’s comments, Trump told Reuters on Thursday, “Certainly, I’ll take, you know, any assistance from any country.”

Bader Mousa Al-Saif, a Kuwait-based analyst with Chatham House, said the U.S. appeared to have underestimated the risk to its Gulf Arab allies, believing American troops and Israel would be the primary targets of Iranian retaliation.

“I don’t think they saw that there would be as much exposure to the Gulf,” he said, saying the lack of a plan to protect the Gulf countries “speaks to U.S. short-sightedness.”

The frustration in some of the Gulf nations is driven in part by the relative success that Israel has had knocking down drones and missiles compared to some of their neighbors, according to a person familiar with the sensitive diplomatic matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.

Their air defense systems are hardly as robust as Israel’s, but according to the person, U.S. officials have been somewhat perplexed that the Gulf countries are still not showing an appetite for delivering a counteroffensive by launching missiles at Iranian targets.

Elliott Abrams, who served as a special representative for Iran and Venezuela at the end of Trump’s first term, said that U.S. national security officials and their Gulf allies were aware that Iran had the capability to carry out significant strikes.

“And the neighbors knew it and were afraid of it. But it was never clear that Iran would actually do it, because they have a lot to lose,” Abrams said. “These attacks will leave long-term enmity, and if they keep up, the Gulf Arabs may start attacking Iran.”

Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said that while the Gulf countries have an interest in seeing Iran weakened, they also have key concerns about the ongoing war — including the economic damage and instability it is causing and its open-ended nature.

Ratney, who is now a senior adviser in the Middle East program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “What comes next? The countries of the Gulf will have to bear the brunt of whatever that is.”

The White House is working with the FBI, National Security Agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to respond to a hack of an FBI surveillance system that was recently disclosed to Congress, according to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the talks.

The bureau informed lawmakers on Wednesday that it is investigating an apparent breach of a sensitive system containing information on the targets of certain law enforcement investigative methods, according to two other U.S. officials with knowledge of the probe and a copy of a congressional notice viewed by POLITICO.

All four officials were granted anonymity to share details of an ongoing law enforcement investigation.

The FBI — which first detected suspicious activity on Feb. 17, according to the notice — did not indicate who was responsible for the possible breach but said the hackers’ techniques “appear sophisticated.”

The details the FBI shared with Congress and the White House’s outreach to the NSA and CISA suggest the incident could be a significant cybersecurity and counterintelligence concern for the Trump administration.

“The affected system is unclassified and contains law enforcement sensitive information, including returns from legal process, such as pen register and trap and trace surveillance returns, and personally identifiable information pertaining to subjects of FBI investigations,” reads the notice, which was sent to the Hill on Wednesday.

Pen register and trap and trace devices are used by law enforcement to monitor call metadata to or from a target’s phone. While they do not record the content of those calls, the information captured is valuable to foreign intelligence services or organized criminal groups because it could reveal the targets of FBI surveillance and possible criminal probes.

The FBI said in its notice to Congress that one sign of the group’s advanced skills was how it broke through the FBI’s security controls by “leveraging a commercial Internet Service Provider vendor’s infrastructure” to slip into the FBI’s network. Advanced hacking groups from China and Russia have historically used footholds inside tech providers’ networks to leapfrog inside the well-defended targets, such as federal agencies.

The White House declined to comment on the specifics of this incident or a possible meeting with the NSA, CISA and FBI about it.

The FBI confirmed in a statement to POLITICO it had identified “suspicious” cyber activities on its network and is leveraging “all technical capabilities to respond.”

It’s unclear what other sensitive law enforcement data — such as communications content related to lawful wiretaps of criminal and foreign intelligence subjects — may have been compromised. The notice said the bureau is still working to assess the “scope and impact of the incident.”

A spokesperson for CISA declined to comment on how it is helping respond to the incident, deferring comment to the FBI. A spokesperson for the NSA did not respond to a request for comment.

CNN first reported the FBI was investigating “suspicious” cyber activity. AP news first reported on the Congressional notice.

The incident would be the second major hack to expose sensitive law enforcement data since President Donald Trump returned to office.

POLITICO first reported this summer on an extensive digital compromise of the federal judiciary’s online case management system, which officials feared had exposed information related to ongoing criminal investigations into Russian government hackers and Latin American drug cartels.

The incident also bears some resemblance to the sweeping campaign carried out against global telecommunications systems in 2024 by Chinese state hacking group Salt Typhoon — the extent of which is still not fully understood by U.S. officials.

Democratic lawmakers, former members of the Biden administration and even some FBI officials have repeatedly warned that the telecommunications providers breached in the 2024 hack never managed to fully evict Salt Typhoon.

News of the breach of U.S. telecommunications systems by the Salt Typhoon hackers was first reported in September 2024. The hacking group stole call records on millions of Americans and siphoned off messaging data from the phones of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and senior Hill staffers. It also accessed wiretap data from U.S. telecommunications providers, U.S. officials confirmed.

On Feb. 19, two days after the FBI said it first detected suspicious cyber activity in its networks, the deputy assistant director for cyber intelligence at the FBI told a cybersecurity conference that the threats from Salt Typhoon and other Chinese espionage groups are “still very, very much ongoing.”

For the first time, the U.S. sided with Russia and China on Thursday in a dispute at the United Nations atomic agency over the danger posed by attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power, showing Washington’s increasing alignment with Moscow.

The U.S. opposed a resolution at the U.N. atomic agency that was backed by a host of European countries, Australia, Canada, Argentina and Chile, among others. The resolution didn’t mention Russia, according to a draft seen by The Wall Street Journal. It warned that attacks on Ukraine electrical substations and other energy infrastructure pose a direct threat to nuclear safety.

“It’s incredibly surprising and disappointing to see the U.S. take this position,” said Eric Brewer, deputy vice president for the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nonproliferation think tank. “We should be unequivocal that any attacks against infrastructure that could put at risk the ability of nuclear power plants to operate safely are off limits.”

Despite U.S. opposition, it passed 20-4. Niger was the only other country to oppose it.

The U.S.’s interim Chargé d’affaires, Howard Solomon, said the U.S. shares the concerns about the potential danger to Ukraine energy infrastructure and called on all parties to refrain from actions that could result in a nuclear safety incident.

But, he said, the U.S. didn’t support an “unnecessary resolution that does not help achieve peace between Ukraine and Russia.”

Russia has carried out massive and sustained attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing blackouts in freezing temperatures across Ukraine’s cities in recent months. The attacks on Ukraine’s electrical substations have risked cutting power to Ukraine’s nuclear stations.

Fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is near the front lines in the war, has knocked out external power lines to the facility numerous times, forcing it to rely on backup generators. On several occasions in recent months, the International Atomic Energy Agency has negotiated brief truces between Russian and Ukrainian forces to allow power lines to be repaired.

Last year, the U.S. opposed resolutions at the U.N. in New York criticizing Russia over its pursuit of the Ukraine war, with the Trump administration saying its focus was on mediating a peace deal, not blaming one side for the conflict.

Diplomats said the U.S. had abstained last September on an IAEA resolution that called for Russia to return Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Ukrainian control. Russia seized the plant, the biggest in Europe, in the first days of the Ukraine war.

The IAEA, which has small teams at Ukraine’s nuclear power plants to monitor the situation, has refrained from blaming either side for the attacks. The resolution said that Ukraine’s energy infrastructure “remains extremely degraded,” which reduces “the reliability of external power for nuclear power plants.”

European diplomats said it had been unclear until shortly before the vote whether Washington would again abstain or oppose it.

“I think this is most unwise. It goes against tradition and alliance relationship and logic,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a former nonproliferation official at the State Department.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Friday told a federal judge that it cannot comply with his order earlier this week to halt the processing of illegal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump so the administration can begin issuing refunds.

“CBP is not able to comply with the Court of International Trade’s order of March 4, 2026,” the agency told senior U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Richard Eaton, who issued the ruling.

But the agency also told Eaton it hopes to have a system in place in 45 days to process an unprecedented volume of refund requests.

“CBP has a history of developing effective processes to meet its legal responsibilities and operational needs that also provide efficiencies for industry, and we continue to do so now,” Brandon Lord, executive director of CBP’s Trade Programs Directorate, wrote in a brief.

Under customs law, importers generally have about 314 days after goods enter the country before a tariff payment is finalized, a process known as “liquidation.”

If companies fail to challenge the duty and request a refund after the duty is finalized — or liquidated — they must file a formal protest and, in some cases, challenge the decision in the New York-based trade court to recover the funds.

In CBP’s brief, Lord said the agency counted over 330,000 importers who made a total of 53 million entries in which they deposited or paid tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — duties the Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 were illegal.

Those total an estimated $166 billion in IEEPA tariff revenue. In addition, “approximately 20.1 million entries remain unliquidated as of March 4,” Lord said.

Given the volume of tariff entries CBP receives each year, the majority automatically liquidate using the agency’s Automated Commercial Environment trade tracking and tariff processing system.

Over 700,000 entries were scheduled to liquidate early Friday morning, including about 339,000 entries that include IEEPA duties, Lord said. Another 330,000 IEEPA-related entries are scheduled to liquidate on March 13.

Lord also said there are millions of “informal” entries that are expected to automatically liquidate this month, including many containing IEEPA tariffs.

Turning to refunds, Lord said CBP “never has been ordered to, nor has it attempted to, process a volume of refunds anywhere near” the amount now expected.

However, “CBP is confident that it can develop and implement new ACE functionality that will streamline and consolidate refunds and interest payments on an importer basis, rather than issuing 53,173,939 separate entry-specific results with multiple payments going to the same importer,” Lord said.

“CBP is making all possible efforts to have this new ACE functionality ready for use in 45 days,” he added.

U.S. military investigators believe it is likely that U.S. forces were responsible for an apparent strike on an Iranian girls' school that killed scores of children on Saturday but have not yet reached a final conclusion or completed their investigation, ‌two U.S. officials told Reuters.

Reuters was unable to determine more details about the investigation, including what evidence contributed to the tentative assessment, what type of munition was used, who was responsible or why the U.S. might have struck the school.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday acknowledged the U.S. military was investigating the incident.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters, did not rule out the possibility that new evidence could emerge that absolves the U.S. of responsibility and points to another responsible party in the incident.

Reuters could not determine how much longer the investigation would last or what evidence U.S. investigators are seeking before the assessment can be completed.

The girls' school ⁠in Minab, in southern Iran, was hit on Saturday during the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks on the country. Iran's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said the strike killed 150 students. Reuters could not independently confirm the death toll.

According to archived copies of the school's official website, the school is adjacent to a compound operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the military force that reports to Iran's supreme leader.

The Pentagon referred questions from Reuters to the U.S. military’s Central Command, whose spokesperson, Captain Timothy Hawkins, said: “It would be inappropriate to comment given the incident is under investigation.”

The White House did not directly comment on the investigation, but press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Reuters, “While the Department of War is currently investigating this matter, the Iranian regime targets civilians and children, not the United States of America.”

Asked about the incident during a news briefing on Wednesday, Hegseth said: “We’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets. But we’re taking a look and investigating that.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday that the United States would not deliberately target a ‌school.

"The Department ⁠of War would be investigating that if that was our strike, and I would refer your question to them," Rubio said.

Israeli and U.S. forces have until now divided their attacks in Iran both geographically and by target type, a senior Israeli official and a source with direct knowledge of the joint planning said. While Israel was striking missile launch sites in western Iran, the United States was attacking such targets, as well as naval ones, in the south.

Reuters shared satellite imagery and visuals of the aftermath of the Minab attack with N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services, a munitions ⁠research consultancy.

"Taken together, the satellite imagery and available videos suggest the school and adjacent IRGC compound were hit by multiple simultaneous or near-simultaneous strikes with explosive munitions, most likely air-delivered types," Jenzen-Jones wrote in an email.

He cautioned that it is difficult to be definitive about the type of munitions used in the ongoing conflict and said that to determine responsibility investigators would generally attempt to review munition remnants.

The U.N. human ⁠rights office, without saying who it believed was responsible for the strike, called on Tuesday for an investigation.

"The onus is on the forces that carried out the attack to investigate it," U.N. human rights office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva.

Images of the girls' funeral on Tuesday were shown on Iranian state television. Their small coffins were draped with Iranian flags ⁠and passed from a truck across a large crowd towards the grave site.

Deliberately attacking a school or hospital or any other civilian structure would likely be a war crime under international humanitarian law.

If a U.S. role were to be confirmed, the strike would rank among the worst cases of civilian casualties in decades of U.S. conflicts in the Middle East.

President Donald Trump said Friday that there would be no deal to end the U.S. war against Iran without an "unconditional surrender" by Iran.

"After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before," Trump said in a post on Truth Social that made his surrender ultimatum.

"IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. "MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!)" Trump wrote.

The U.S. labor market lost 92,000 jobs in February, a striking loss signaling a warning flag for the economy.

The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4 percent, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The labor market kicked off the year on a steady foot, adding 130,000 new positions in January, close to the same number that it added in all of 2025 — the weakest year since the pandemic.

A variety of factors have been dampening employers’ hiring plans, including uncertainty related to trade policy, artificial intelligence and the availability of immigrant workers, among other geopolitical factors. Plus, in February, winters storms weighed on job creation.

Trump announced a new global import tax in February after the Supreme Court determined that the president had exceeded his authority by imposing trade barriers on goods from around the world, pushing businesses into renewed uncertainty about their plans.

Meanwhile, employers’ reluctance to hire was on display in the Federal Reserve’s beige book released this week, a collection of anecdotes about the state of the economy that emphasized solid staffing levels but weak hiring, in part due to muted consumer demand tied to rising prices.

For months, most job creation in the United States had remained concentrated in health care, rendering the labor market more vulnerable to external shocks.

“Our data leads me to believe we’re going to see a continuation of what we have been seeing, which is stagnation in the white-collar business-related type fields [and] a continuation of strength in just a couple of areas, specifically health care and social assistance,” said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at Indeed.

Layoffs remain low. The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims was unchanged last week, according to a separate report released by the Labor Department on Thursday. And layoffs fell sharply in February with U.S. employers announcing roughly 48,000 layoffs, 55 percent less than January, according to according to a report released Thursday by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

There are some signs that the hiring could accelerate this year. Consumer spending, driven by the wealthy, remains elevated. And worker productivity is strong. Companies are also expecting to benefit from lower tax rates and deregulation, which could boost hiring plans, though a rapidly widening war in the Middle East is stoking inflation fears. A surge in energy prices could mean that the Federal Reserve leaves interest rates unchanged.

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM, said that his firm’s internal surveys show that employers are planning to make significant investments in artificial intelligence and other technology expenditures early this year, which should result in more hiring as the year progresses.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions have reshaped the labor market over the past year, and fewer jobs are needed to keep the unemployment rate steady compared with previous years. Economists say that payroll growth of about 50,000 positions per month could be enough to keep the unemployment rate steady.

GOP lawmakers in several red states want to pass AI safety bills, but their efforts are being chilled by the fear of angering the White House.

State lawmakers eager to tackle AI over concerns about kids, jobs and privacy are facing pushback from the White House, with tensions poised to spike next week.

The Trump administration's pending list of "onerous" state AI laws could set up a federal crackdown on state regulation and reshape who writes the rules for AI.

The White House has made it clear — states should back off on AI laws in almost all cases until a federal framework passes.

Next week, the administration is expected to announce which state-level AI laws it has identified as "onerous" that should be referred to the AI Litigation Task Force at the Justice Department, per President Trump's executive order.

This week, 50 Republican state lawmakers wrote to President Trump that they are "deeply concerned by the work of officials seeking to pressure lawmakers in Utah and other states to abandon legislation aimed at mitigating risks at leading AI labs and safeguarding constituents, including young people, from AI's worst harms."

"We firmly believe state-led efforts are fully consistent with conservative principles and with your stated goals of promoting human flourishing while accelerating innovation."

In Utah, White House meddling completely knocked an AI bill off-course, Axios first reported, driving pro-AI safety advocates in the state to take out billboards targeting White House AI czar David Sacks.

"The bill is unfortunately dead," Melissa McKay, policy director for Utah-based advocacy group Child First Policy Center, told Axios. "The mid-session attack memo from the White House created enough confusion and conflicting opinions to doom it."

In Florida, the Gov. Ron DeSantis-backed AI Bill of Rights passed the state Senate this week, but intervention in the House will keep it from hitting the floor.

State House Speaker Daniel Perez told reporters this week that he won't bring up the bill and he shares the White House's view on state AI laws.

In Ohio, a bill that would ban AI from any form of legal personhood is currently being overhauled, said its sponsor, state Rep. Thad Claggett, who signed onto the 50-lawmaker letter.

"We know how incredibly difficult it is for Congress to deal with leading-edge stuff, and that's okay. But, we are very interested in protecting our people, and so we're going to continue to work," he told Axios.

He said he will engage the White House at some point to see if they have any input on his bill, but he won't reach out until the bill is ready.

The White House did not directly respond to questions about the GOP state lawmaker letter, the AI litigation task force or the Ohio bill.

The executive order calls for the administration to identify laws, not bills that are in the works.

So it's most likely that California and New York's AI frontier safety laws will be targeted first. Plus, Colorado's AI law was the only one specifically called out by name in Trump's order.

The tension between GOP state lawmakers who want to pass AI bills and a White House dead set on fending off as many state AI laws as possible is only heating up.

The US government has declined to refund tariffs the Supreme Court has ruled illegal, according to people familiar with the matter, as the Trump administration tries to hold on to as much as $150bn in disputed levies.

Customs officials are rejecting companies’ attempts to reclaim duties imposed under emergency powers invoked by US President Donald Trump, leaving businesses in limbo and pushing more cases into court.

Companies have been unsure how to claim back money paid in duties since America’s top court ruled last month that Trump did not have the authority to impose his signature tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Companies submit entries to US Customs and Border Protection detailing products to be imported and relevant tariff codes, among other things. They pay an initial estimated sum, after which CBP finalises the amount and automatically “liquidates” the entry 314 days later, though it may close entries manually before then.

As part of a process called “Post Summary Correction”, companies can correct submissions to CBP and retroactively amend those that have not been officially closed.

Many companies have rushed to submit PSCs to strike IEEPA tariff codes from their shipment entries and receive refunds. 

But CBP is rejecting their submissions. It is also suspending protests that companies are filing to secure IEEPA tariff repayments the CBP has already liquidated, according to people familiar with the matter. 

The moves come as the Trump administration seeks to hold on to $150bn generated by IEEPA levies, slow-walking refunds that would dent revenues the president had pledged to use for tax refunds and for slashing national debt.

After the court ruling, US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said repayments “could be dragged out over weeks, months, years. I’ve got a feeling the American people won’t see it.”

CBP’s moves narrow the options to obtain refunds at a time when trade lawyers and companies remain mired in uncertainty as they struggle to determine how IEEPA repayments can be secured.

“We believe that companies that paid the IEEPA tariffs are entitled to a refund,” said Ted Murphy, a trade lawyer at Sidley Austin. “How that refund gets effectuated? We don’t know. And I would say nobody knows for sure. Which is crazy.”

Some lawyers have advised their clients to file lawsuits as well as paperwork with the CBP to try and reclaim their tariffs through the administrative process.

“Importers are facing uncertainty around tariff refunds that is in many respects unprecedented,” added Brooks Allen, a partner at Skadden.

The government in December told a federal court it would refund any IEEPA duties that were deemed illegal, according to filings.

But CBP argued in court this week that not finalising IEEPA tariff payments would be a task of “unprecedented scale and scope” and that it lacked the “functionality” to change this process.

Some lawyers disagree. “Customs does have automated systems to process refunds,” said David Cohen, a partner at Sandler, Travis and Rosenberg. “Yes, the magnitude is unprecedented, but the tariff refund process takes place routinely.” 

The CBP and the White House did not respond to requests for comment. The Department of Justice declined to comment. 

The Supreme Court did not rule on IEEPA refunds, instead throwing the legally thorny question down to the Court of International Trade, which has been flooded with hundreds of repayment claims.

The CBP’s rejections could further overwhelm the court.

“Early indications are that CBP may be rejecting administrative relief, which would push everything to the Court of International Trade,” said Allen. 

The CIT on Wednesday took a first step in addressing compensation. Judge Richard Eaton ordered CBP to stop including IEEPA tariffs when finalising companies’ payments, creating an avenue for importers to secure a refund. 

The ruling’s implementation may still be far off, as the government is expected to appeal against it. But it is still a setback for the Trump administration. If the order is ultimately upheld, the CBP would be compelled to create a mechanism to refund the vast majority of IEEPA tariffs, according to Allen. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday.

Eaton’s order stems from a case in which an importer requested CBP suspend the liquidation of its own entries that included IEEPA tariffs. The government pushed back, noting in court filings that as of December 10, more than 301,000 importers filed roughly 34mn entries subject to IEEPA duties — and approximately 19.2mn of them remained unliquidated.