Matt Spivey
Live page editor

Despite Trump's controversial plan for a US "take over" of Gaza continuing to be on the lips of many, and a doubling-down from him on social media platform Truth Social, there was barely a whisper about it from the president at two prayer breakfasts this morning.

The plan still seems far from concrete, with little notion from Trump's team on how this could actually play out, though he did firm up that US troops will not be "on the ground" in Gaza.

An executive order signed by Trump today pulled focus, sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) for targeting the US and allies, such as Israel.

As Netanyahu met with top US officials and Trump turned attention to his legacy, a Hamas spokesperson said that rejecting Trump's plan "is not enough", calling for an urgent Arab summit to "confront" the proposal to displace those living in the Gaza Strip.

At an official level, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are issuing statements saying they reject Trump's proposal, while on the ground people are continuing to return to the north of Gaza, Rushdi Abualouf writes.

We're now ending our live coverage, thanks for joining us. For the latest on this story, head to our news story.

John Ringer
Reporting from Washington DC

A former Israeli prime minister has rejected Trump's proposal to "take over" Gaza, telling the BBC the plan is unworkable because the territory isn't Israel's to give away.

Ehud Olmert tells the BBC's World News America programme he'd welcome US help in reconstructing Gaza, but only if it's being rebuilt by and for Palestinians.

Olmert was a member of current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party for over 30 years. But in 2006 he and then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon broke from the party in order to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza.

Watch what he had to say below:

Trump also signed another executive order on Thursday. This one is intended to "eradicate anti-Christian bias" within the US government.

The order was previewed by Trump earlier today at the National Prayer Breakfast - and specifically calls out government agencies such as the FBI, the IRS and the Department of Justice.

"We’ll work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society, and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide," Trump pledged to the audience.

The order instructs newly appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi to form a taskforce that will work “to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government”.

As a reminder, earlier we reported that a court order had been issued pushing back the deadline for federal employees to opt into a "deferred resignation" programme until a court hearing on Monday.

We've just had a note from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that the deadline has been extended until 11:59 EST on Monday "in compliance with the court order".

But the note also insists that the the program is not "being blocked or cancelled".

A moment ago, we brought you news that Trump has today signed an executive order issuing sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC).

We have now have further details of the order itself - in which the president accuses the court of engaging in "illegitimate and baseless actions" targeting both America and Israel.

The order sets out: "The ICC has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power by issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant."

The US "remains committed to accountability," it adds, as well as "international order".

As a reminder, neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC.

Two and a half weeks post-inauguration and Trump is continuing to sign executive orders - including one today imposing US sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In a document seen by the BBC, the order places financial and visa-related sanctions on individuals who help in investigations of US citizens or US allies, as well as their family members.

Sanctions have been imposed on the ICC for targeting the US and its allies, the document says.

It follows the court issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defence minister over the war in Gaza last November.

We've got more Trump issuing sanctions against the ICC in his previous term in our previous post.

Image source, Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was seen leaving the West Wing of the White House earlier today.

According to a spokesman for Meta - which owns Instagram and Facebook - Zuckerberg was there "to discuss how Meta can help the administration defend and advance American tech leadership abroad".

Zuckerberg attended Trump's inauguration, alongside several other tech CEOs. He has grown closer with the Republican administration in recent months.

Facebook banned Trump's account due to the Capitol riot led by Trump's supporters in January 2021, but unfroze it two years later.

Last month, Zuckerberg appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast where he criticised Biden officials for yelling at Meta executives in an effort to push disinformation on the site.

Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, tells the BBC that the president's proposal to redevelop Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East" is "just isn't going to happen".

He says the US role in such a plan would have to be between "slim and none" because "you can't put Americans in that kind of security environment without military protection and that just isn't going to happen".

But he does suggest Palestinians in Gaza be offered resettlement.

"Rebuilding a high-rise refugee camp is not an answer," he says, suggesting instead the possibility of "some kind of resettlement which would not be forcible but which would be consistent with international refugee doctrine".

He is critical of Trump's approach of making such an announcement "without consulting with anybody".

Reflecting on his time working for Trump in the White House, he says: “It’s very difficult. And he knows very little about the wider world, he doesn’t think it’s important to learn and he says things that he doesn’t appreciate the full ramifications of. So, this is another example of it.”

Image source, Getty Images

New York Attorney General Letitia James says she and others will be suing the Trump administration over attempts by the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to access Treasury Department payment systems.

James says Elon Musk, who heads Doge, has been given access to "some of our country's most sensitive data".

Earlier this week, US media reported that Musk's team had been granted access by the Trump administration to the federal payments system in the US that controls the flow of trillions of dollars in funds every year.

James argues that Musk is unauthorised to access that sensitive information, and that him doing so is "unlawful, unprecedented and unacceptable."

"Doge has no authority to access this information," James says, adding that their goal is to block payments that "millions of Americans rely on".

“In defense of our constitution, our right to privacy, and the essential funding that individuals and communities nationwide are counting on, we will be filing a lawsuit to stop this injustice," she says.

The lawsuit will be filed by James, as well as the attorney generals of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Rhode Island and others.

Donald Trump turning attention to his legacy with Gaza planpublished at 21:08 Greenwich Mean Time 6 February

21:08 GMT 6 February

Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent

One explanation for Donald Trump’s unexpected and expansive proposal for resolving the Gaza situation is that he is a second-term president and, like many of his predecessors, his thoughts are increasingly turning to how the history books will remember him.

An area where presidents typically have broad authority, and can burnish their legacy, is foreign policy.

With narrow majorities in Congress, any legislation Trump supports in the months ahead is going to face a tough road to passage – and will probably include sometimes unpleasant compromises.

With each passing day, Trump’s domestic authority will diminish, as his own party begins to look toward first toward next year’s midterm congressional elections and, ultimately, to a new standard-bearer in the 2028 presidential contest.

A dramatic foreign policy breakthrough, however, is something Trump and his White House team could seek on their own – akin to Ronald Reagan’s negotiations with the Soviets in his second term or Bill Clinton’s ill-fated Wye River meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

The Middle East isn’t Trump’s only foreign policy interest – his ongoing ambitions for acquiring Greenland, for instance, signal an alternative avenue for legacy-building.

But his successful brokering of the Abraham Accords at the end of his first term may give him reason to think he can pull off another diplomatic success in the region, even if his first steps in that direction this time around have already met stiff resistance.

Image source, Avi Ohayon/GPO

We're moving briefly over to Capitol Hill, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting with US lawmakers.

A photo of him posing with Democratic Senator John Fetterman has just been released. Fetterman is wearing his signature hoodie, flashing two thumbs up with Netanyahu by his side.

We are expecting to hear remarks from the Israeli PM today as he's scheduled to address the media along with Speaker Mike Johnson.

We've just heard from Secretary of State Marco Rubio - and he won't be pressed on whether or not displaced Palestinians can return to their homes in Gaza.

He says that he doesn't think living next to "unexploded munitions" will be safe, adding it's a "realistic reality" to expect Gazans to live elsewhere while reconstruction is underway.

"Gaza right now has unexploded munitions, lots of rockets and weapons and other things that Hamas was using there and that needs to be dealt with and it's very difficult to do that when you have populations on top of you," he tells the press in Santo Domingo - the last stop of his Latin America tour.

"There are countries in the region who express a lot of concern about the Palestinian people and we encourage them to step forward and provide a solution and an answer to that problem," he adds.

Image source, EPA

A little earlier, we heard from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who insists that Trump has "made it clear" that he will not be sending US troops to Gaza.

When asked about American troops' involvement in Gaza during yesterday's daily press briefing, she said Trump had "not committed to putting boots on the ground".

This lack of a definitive answer from Leavitt has changed today, following on from reiterations from both Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu that no US troops will be "on the ground" in Gaza.

Image source, Getty Images

Senators are set to vote today on the confirmation of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the White House budget office.

His nomination has been controversial as he's known as being one of the lead architects of Project 2025 - a 900-page "wish list" from right wing, ultra-conservatives of what they would like Trump to accomplish during his term.

Project 2025 calls for the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies like the Department of Justice, to be placed under direct presidential control. It also advocates for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees, and calls for a nationwide ban on abortion.

These ideas - and with them, Vought's nomination - have been met with fierce pushback from Democratic lawmakers, who held the Senate floor overnight into Thursday in protest ahead of the vote to confirm him.

"We're going to be speaking all night," said Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer during the overnight session. "We want Americans ever hour, whether it's 8 p.m. or 3 a.m., to hear how bad Russell Vought is and the danger he poses to them in their daily lives."

Vought received the backing of Republicans including Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, who earlier wrote on X that Vought "has proven that he is the right person to stop the waste and abuse of US taxpayers' dollars". Hagerty adds: "I look forward to confirming him."

As we've been reporting, a judge has pushed back tonight's midnight deadline for federal employees to accept a resignation offer proposed by the Trump administration.

The offer on the table is for employees who wish to step down in exchange for continued pay until 30 September. It comes as part of the administration's work to cut down on the size of the government workforce and had been issued in the form of an email.

Some two million federal employees had been advised they could opt in - with unions who represent US government workers suing to block the plan for mass resignations.

For those who did not opt in, the message cautioned: "We cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity."

There's been no formal response yet to the deferred resignation's blocked deadline from the Trump administration or the Justice Department.

But an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) official tells the BBC's US partner CBS News agencies that they "will still be able to process resignations until this new court-ordered deadline."

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from the White House

Image source, EPA

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has just confirmed that "more than 40,000" federal workers have accepted a recent buyout programme, as the Trump administration works to slim down the federal workforce.

"We expect the number to increase," Leavitt tells reporters outside the West Wing. "It's going to save the American people tens of millions of dollars."

Leavitt adds that the administration encourages other workers to "accept the very generous offer".

"If they don't want to show up to the office, if they want to rip the American people off, then they're welcome to take this buyout, and we'll find highly competent individuals who want to fill these roles,” she says.

Federal employees had been given until midnight on Thursday to decide to step down in exchange for continued pay until 30 September - but a judge has just placed a temporary block on that deadline, the BBC's US news partner CBS has reported.

Some two million federal employees were advised they could opt in to the deferred resignation programme - an offer akin to a gradual buy-out - last week.

• Read more about the resignation offer

A judge has placed a temporary block on a deadline for federal employees to decide on a "deferred resignation" offer, the BBC's US partner, CBS News, reports.

Federal employees had originally been given until midnight tonight to decide whether to resign on the basis of receiving continued pay until 30 September.

Tens of thousands have reportedly accepted the offer so far, which constitutes action the Trump administration is taking to cut down on the size of the government.

CBS reports now that Senior District Judge George O'Toole has prevented the implementation of the deadline during a brief hearing.

Image source, Reuters

This is not the first time Trump has imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Three years into his first presidency, in June 2020, he placed sanctions on senior officials at the ICC as the court investigated whether US forces had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Trump administration accused the ICC of infringing on US national sovereignty, with Trump warning that anyone supporting the ICC with their investigation would "risk exposure to sanctions" too.

The order allowed the US to block the assets of ICC employees and stop them entering the country. The court said the move was an attack on international justice and the rule of law.

The sanctions were ultimately lifted in April 2021, with former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken describing them as "inappropriate and ineffective" and called for closer co-operation.

Trump is set to sign an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) later today for targeting the US and allies, such as Israel, the BBC understands.

The order will see both financial and visa related sanctions applied to individuals assisting the ICC with its investigations into US citizens or allies, as well as their families.

The move comes in response to the ICC's decision to issue arrest warrants against both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other Israeli and Hamas officials last year.

Senate Democrats last week blocked a bill which sought to sanction the ICC, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the bill "poorly drafted" and "deeply problematic".

• Neither the US nor Israel are members of the ICC. For more on what the ICC is you can head to our explainer