Rachel Looker
BBC News

Today was a busy one for politics news out of the nation's capital, as well as New York.

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was the biggest political event of the day where we heard from high-profile speakers like Steve Bannon, who called for Trump to run again in 2028 despite the US Constitution barring it, and Elon Musk, who brandished a chainsaw given to him onstage by Argentina's president.

Other Republicans talked immigration, tariffs, and government spending. Vice President JD Vance told the crowd that "everything is on the table" when it comes to negotiations with Russia over the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, in New York, Governor Kathy Hochul said she would not fire Mayor Eric Adams, but instead impose "guardrails" on his administration. The Trump administration has moved to drop federal corruption charges against Adams. Justice Department officials who resigned in protest over the decision accused the mayor of agreeing to enforce Trump's immigration policy in exchange for ending the case against him. You can read more about New York here.

The CPAC conference ends this weekend. We'll be bringing you top lines from the meeting and elsewhere in the US political sphere again tomorrow.

Trump in his speech tonight attacked the Associated Press - one of the globe's largest and most-respected news agencies - as "radical left" over their policy on what to call the body of water bordering Mexico, Cuba and five southern US states.

The president renamed the body of water the Gulf of America in an executive order.

The AP, though, has continued to call it the Gulf of Mexico, noting the body of water has been named that for more than 400 years.

Along with news stories, the agency publishes an influential style book that is used by almost all major news organisations. AP said its decision was made to ensure the "names of geographical features are recognizable around the world".

Trump's administration has booted AP journalists from several events at the White House over the decision.

Tonight, he said the AP "treats us very badly" and he's "sure they'll get sued".

In his speech to the Republican governors, Trump returned to a favorite talking point - making Canada the 51st state of the United States.

While talking about trade, he said there was a way carmakers and other industries could avoid US tariffs.

"All you have to do is build your plant in the United States," he said.

He went after Canada specifically, telling the Republican governors the country will have to pay steep levies.

"I think they have to become the 51st state," he said, adding he would like to keep Oh Canada as its national anthem.

"I call him Governor Trudeau," he says, taking a jab at the Canadian prime minister. "I think it's actually cost him his election if you want to know the truth."

Trudeau announced his resignation in January.

"We're going to see about that," he says, wrapping up his comments on Canada becoming a 51st state.

As we reported earlier, Trump also promoted the hockey game between the US and Canada tonight, the final match in the 4 Nations Face-off.

His refrains about adding Canada as a state and hitting them with steep tariffs have seemingly affected the tournament.

In the first game in Montreal the US national anthem was booed by Canadian fans throughout and three fist fights then broke out on the ice in the first nine seconds of the game between the American and Canadian players.

You can read more about the tournament and US-Canada relations here.

Trump has finished speaking to the Republican Governors Association. At the very end he told them to "go home and watch the hockey game - it should be interesting."

The US and Canada are going up against each other in Boston in the final night of the 4 Nations Face-off hockey tournament. The last game in the tournament this weekend saw fights break out on the ice and the crowds in Montreal booing the US.

Trump reportedly called the US players this morning to wish them luck.

Trump is jumping around to various topics throughout his speech to Republican governors, talking about voter turnout and egg prices (which he said were coming down, contrary to most reports).

He's now talking about cuts his administration has made through his Department of Government Efficiency - which is overseen by billionaire Elon Musk.

Trump is rattling off international aid programs they're cutting, including one, he says, to increase voter turnout in India.

"Why are we caring about India turnout" Trump asks the group. "We got enough problems... Can you imagine all that money going to India?"

He calls it a "kickback scheme" - a similar notion he's echoed about international aid programs. Trump and Musk have decried such programs as fraud but BBC Verify has fact-checked many of these claims and found no evidence to support the assertions.

He's hitting many of the same points he made in his Wednesday speech to a summit backed by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and in his campaign speeches in the final months before winning the 2024 presidential election.

We're turning from Trump's remarks briefly, to bring you news from earlier today about the Edward Martin, the US attorney for Washington, investigating potential threats made against Trump adviser Elon Musk.

Specifically, Martin looking into remarks made by Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat from California, asking him in a letter sent this week to clarify remarks he made during a CNN interview.

In the interview, Garcia said "what the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight" to stop Elon Musk from shrinking government.

"This sounds to me like a threat," Martin said in his letter. "We take threats against public officials very seriously."

Garcia denied that his comments were threats in a post today on X, the social media platform owned by Musk.

"No reasonable person would view my comments as a threat. We are living in a dangerous time, and elected members of Congress must have the right to forcefully oppose the Trump Administration," he said.

He later posted the letter and wrote: I will not be silenced.

Garcia has until Feb. 24 to formally respond to Martin's letter.

Trump is now addressing Republican governors at an event in Washington and opens by applauding the work thus far of his administration.

He talks about his use of executive orders and says he inherited a "real mess" from previous President Joe Biden.

"We just ripped down whatever they've done," he tells the crowd, referring to Biden's administration. "I want to just do one executive order - anything he signed is now terminated."

In Washington, we're expecting to hear from President Trump soon at an event where he'll speak before Republican governors.

The event is being hosted by the Republican Governors Association and comes as many of the nation's governors are meeting in DC for their 2025 Winter Meeting.

Trump is also expected to meet with governors of both parties at the White House on Friday.

Coming back to the CPAC, Steve Bannon - one of the last speakers at the event today - led the crowd in a chant of "we want Trump!"

Bannon, a former strategist and long-time ally of Trump, says the future of America is Maga (Trump's slogan of Make America Great Again) and tells the crowd that Republicans want the current president to run again in 2028. The US constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents.

Trump served his first four-year term in 2016, lost re-election in 2020 and then won in 2024. This is the last four years he's allowed by US law to serve as the president.

Trump, too, has floated the idea more than once that he might like to extend his stay at the White House.

Speaking to House Republicans during their annual retreat in Florida last month, he said: "I’ve raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can’t use for myself, but I’m not 100 percent sure because I don’t know,”

“I think I’m not allowed to run again. I’m not sure. Am I allowed to run again?,” Trump said, drawing laughter.

Meanwhile back in Washington, a federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration can continue its mass firings of government employees.

The judge's ruling on Thursday is only temporary while a lawsuit filed by a group of labour unions last week plays out.

The National Treasury Employees Union and four other unions filed a suit to block the administration from firing and offering buyouts to hundreds of thousands of federal employees.

It comes as Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to slash government spending and purge the federal workforce.

Roughly 75,000 people have accepted a buyout offer to leave voluntarily and receive pay for several months, according to the White House. The number represents about 3% of the more than 2 million people who work in the federal government.

Another 10,000 federal workers have been fired, some of whom have also filed lawsuits.

Image source, Getty Images

The final question of Elon Musk's CPAC interview was a request to "paint us a picture of inside the mind of a genius".

He answered the question by talking about his South Africa upbringing and being influenced by US culture, reading "comic books" and playing "Dungeons and Dragons".

When he was finished, he grabbed the shiny red chainsaw laying in front of his feet and raised it above his head, and was met with a standing ovation from the crowd.

As CPAC winds down for the evening, we share a video of one of the conference's more memorable moments today, when Elon Musk was handed a chainsaw by Argentina President Javier Milei.

Image source, EPA

Earlier at CPAC, Attorney General Pam Bondi weighed in on the Eric Adams case, saying it was an "incredibly weak case filed to make deportation harder".

Last week a top official at the justice department instructed prosecutors to drop the case against Adams, saying it had "restricted" the New York mayor's ability to address "illegal immigration and violent crime" - two of President Trump's key priorities.

That led a number of high-level officials to resign, viewing the order as politically-motivated interference in the independent judicial system.

Speaking during a session in the late afternoon, though, Bondi said the case had taken "one of the strongest mayors off the playing field to protect sanctuary cities".

She added that she doesn't believe the case would have even made it to a verdict.

Last year, federal prosecutors charged the mayor of the largest US city with conspiracy, fraud, soliciting illegal campaign contributions, and bribery.

According to the 57-page indictment, Adams is alleged to have accepted more than $100,000 in luxury travel - including hotel stays, lavish meals and airline upgrades - from Turkish nationals beginning in 2016, when he still served as president of the New York borough of Brooklyn.

The case has created a political scandal that has led to the resignations of other top city officials.

Adams denies any wrongdoing and has said the case was political punishment for his criticism of then-President Joe Biden's immigration policies.

The comments from Bondi, the country's top law enforcement officer, are strong allegations against Biden. She did not provide direct evidence that the case was filed to stop deportations.

As we wrote about earlier, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is putting "guardrails" on the Adams administration, saying the Trump administration is using the case "as leverage to squeeze and punish our city."

You can find more information about the Eric Adams case here.

Rachel Looker
Reporting from CPAC in Maryland

Bannon has riled up the crowd.

They began chanting: "Fight, fight, fight!"

This is in reference to President Trump after his first assassination attempt when he raised his right fist and mouthed the same words.

"Are you preared to fight for Trump? Are you prepared to fight for this republic? Are you prepared to fight for this country?" Bannon yells at the crowd.

Rachel Looker
Reporting from CPAC in Maryland

Bannon, once one of Trump's closest advisers, is claiming that the media is covering the conference in an effort to understand the Maga movement - and allegedly hurt it.

"They can't defeat what they don't understand," Bannon says. "They can't destroy what they don't understand. They can't contain what they don't understand."

He tells those listening in crowd they represent the best of the American people.

It shows how much Republicans and political conservatives have unified around Trump and his agenda to "Make America Great Again."

"The future of America is Maga, and the future of Maga is Donald J. Trump," he says.

Then he says that the group wants Trump to run again in 2028. That would be for a third term, which is currently barred by the US constitution.

Still, the crowd joins in with chants: "We want Trump!"

Following Elon Musk on stage is former Trump strategist Steve Bannon - a vocal critic of the tech businessman.

The audience appears to have significantly cleared out after Musk left the stage, and Bannon is speaking to a much smaller audience.

Rachel Looker
Reporting from CPAC in Maryland

Musk ended his talk at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) by raising the chainsaw given to him by Argentine President Javier Milei above his head.

He received a standing ovation from the crowd with loud cheers.

Musk also received a portrait of himself from a member of the audience. The portrait appears to depict Musk in space with a planet behind him.

Musk hits back at criticism of him and President Trump's stance on the war in Ukraine.

"People say like... I'm a bought asset of Putin, I'm like 'he can't afford me'," he says, to cheers from the crowd.

Asked how he processes this criticism, Musk says "we should have empathy" for those on the front lines of the war.

"How many more years is this supposed to go on?... What exactly are they dying for?" he asks.

"I'll tell you what for", he continues, "the biggest graft machine in my entire life".

"The amount of money that has been taken in graft and bribery is disgusting... these poor guys are being fed into a meat grinder for money... and it needs to stop," he says.

He does not explain or provide details about the alleged graft and bribery, or the connection to how soldiers are being sacrificed for money.

But the comments are in line with a recent, radical shift in the US stance on Ukraine and relationship with its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

In recent days, Trump has attacked Zelensky, calling him a "dictator", after Zelensky, reacting to US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia from which Kyiv was excluded, said the US president was "living in a disinformation space" governed by Moscow.

The war started three years ago this month when Russia invaded Ukraine. European leaders and many US lawmakers have strongly disagreed with the Trump administration's characterization of Zelensky.

For more background, you can read our coverage here

Rachel Looker
Reporting from CPAC in Maryland

Musk's conversation has touched on a lot of topics.

He was just asked whether he thinks former President Joe Biden intentionally left astronauts up in space to prevent Musk from returning them to Earth using his company SpaceX.

"Yeah, absolutely," Musk responds.

Two astronauts have been stuck on the International Space Station since June because of problems with their Boeing Starliner spacecraft.

"We obviously could have brought them back sooner but they don't want anyone who supported President Trump to look good basically," Musk says.

He, however, did not provide evidence for the claim. There have been a variety of reasons why the astronauts' return was delayed.

The conversation briefly takes a surprising turn - to the gold reserves held at the US Bullion Depository in Fort Knox.

"We wanna go see it", Musk says, "it's the public's gold... I think you've got the right to see it".

He then proposes a tour of the facility to check the gold is still there, and says he thinks Donald Trump is in favour of it.

"It should be like a live tour you see what's going on," Musk says. "I'd watch it."