In a memo to staff members on Tuesday, Bill Owens said that he would not be able to make independent decisions based on what is right for the audience.

“Having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time and with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he wrote in the memo, first reported by The New York Times.

The show has been under attack from Trump, who sued the network for the way it edited its interview with Kamala Harris last fall. CBS corporate leaders have been discussing a potential settlement with Trump, which Owens and others at the show have resisted.

A key piece of the Trump administration’s plan to rapidly expand immigration detention capacity by tens of thousands of beds appears to have fallen through, according to two sources and a government contracting document reviewed by NBC News.

Facing a shortage of immigration detention space, President Donald Trump first announced he would add 30,000 beds for immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba. When that plan fell through over cost and logistical issues, the plan shifted to Fort Bliss, a military base in Texas, to build a sprawling tent city for immigrants to be held before deportation.

A $3.8 billion contract was awarded to Deployed Resources, a contractor that has previously provided toilets and tents for concertgoers, victims of natural disasters and, more recently, migrants who were briefly detained and processed by Border Patrol. 

But last week, new language appeared on the Deployed Resources contract posted to a public records database that says it was terminated. The document says it was terminated "for convenience" and cites Trump’s executive order about “radical transparency" and "wasteful spending,” but it is unclear whether cost savings played into the decision.

Read the full story from NBC News here.

Asked today whether he plans to play hardball with China amid tariff negotiations, Trump suggested just the opposite, saying the United States will "be very nice."

"I‘m not going to say, ‘Oh, I’m going to play hardball with China. ... I’m going to play hardball with you, President Xi!’ No, no, we’re going to be very nice." Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

"They’re going to be very nice, and we’ll see what happens. But ultimately, they have to make a deal, because otherwise they’re not going to be able to deal in the United States. So we want them involved, but they have to, and other countries have to, make a deal," he added.

Trump also indicated that existing 145% tariffs on Chinese imports “will not be anywhere near that number” after the two trading partners arrive at an agreement.

The judge presiding over the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man the Trump administration said it mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador, blasted the Justice Department today for failing to answer questions about the case.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, who ordered the Trump administration last week to answer questions about how Abrego Garcia ended up in the Salvadoran prison and the efforts it has taken to get him out, said today that some of the administration's responses are "vague, evasive and incomplete" and a “willful and bad faith refusal to comply with discovery obligations.”

She said the Justice Department had declined to answer one of the questions because it claimed it was based on the “false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.”

“Defendants—and their counsel—well know that the falsehood lies not in any supposed 'premise,' but in their continued mischaracterization of the Supreme Court’s Order. That Order made clear that this Court 'properly required the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,'” Xinis said.

Trump said he has no plans to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell but insists that the head of the central bank should lower interest rates.

“If he doesn’t, is it the end? No, it’s not,” Trump said, adding that he has “no intention to fire him.”

The ETFs that track the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes jumped after Trump’s comments. Both were up around 1.5% in after-hours trading at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Trump has ratcheted up attacks on Powell as he urges him to cut rates, writing on social media this week that the U.S. economy risks slowing “unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.”

A federal judge agreed Tuesday to block the Trump administration from dismantling Voice of America, the 83-year-old international news service created by Congress.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the administration illegally required Voice of America to cease operations for the first time since its World War II-era inception.

Attorneys for Voice of America employees and contractors asked the judge to restore its ability to broadcast at the same level before Trump moved to slash its funding. Lamberth mostly agreed, ordering the administration to restore Voice of America and two of the independent broadcast networks operated by the U.S. Agency for Global Media — Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks — until the lawsuits are settled.

The judge denied the request for two other independent networks, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Open Technology Fund.

As Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, Republican legislators lawmakers are pushing new state laws targeting people lacking legal status to live in the U.S. Nineteen other states and Washington, D.C., issue driver’s licenses regardless of whether residents can prove their legal presence.

In Florida, motorists with special out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to those in the U.S. illegally are not welcome to drive. Wyoming’s governor enacted a comparable ban this year. And Tennessee’s governor said he will sign similar legislation sent to his desk.

The U.S. will start enforcing national standards for state driver’s licenses May 7. Licenses compliant with the REAL ID Act are marked with a star and require applicants to provide a Social Security number and proof of U.S. citizenship or legal residency.

Read the full story from The Associated Press.

U.S. health officials on Tuesday said they would urge food makers to phase out petroleum-based artificial colors in the nation’s food supply, but stopped short of promising a formal ban and offered few specifics on how they intended to achieve the sweeping change.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said at a news conference that the agency would take steps to eliminate the synthetic dyes by the end of 2026, largely by relying on voluntary efforts from the food industry. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who joined the gathering, said he had heard from food manufacturers, but had no formal agreements with them.

“We don't have an agreement, we have an understanding,” Kennedy said.

The officials said the FDA would establish a standard and timeline for industry to switch to natural alternatives, revoke authorization for dyes not in production within coming weeks and take action to remove remaining dyes on the market.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a comprehensive reorganization of the State Department, changes that would be implemented over the next several months.

In a statement, Rubio said that the department has been "bloated, bureaucratic and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition."

"The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America’s core national interests," he said.

According to a fact sheet shared with State Department staff, several offices will either be closed or folded into other departments. Among the offices that will be shuttered is the Office of Global Criminal Justice, which focuses “on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.” 

In 2016, a Fox News host expressed outrage that Hillary Clinton had sent government emails over a private server while serving as secretary of state. 

This host said her behavior damaged the nation’s credibility. He said it warranted being fired "on the spot." And he said someone who did “even 1/1000th” of what Clinton had done would be jailed.

“The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think, blows the mind of anyone who’s held our nation’s secrets dear,” he said on Fox News at the time, adding that those with top-secret clearances "know that even one hiccup causes a problem.”

That Fox News host, Pete Hegseth, is now the defense secretary, and is facing his own controversy on mishandling sensitive information after he texted to a group chat — which included a journalist from The Atlantic — details of a planned strike in Yemen before it was carried out. National security adviser Mike Waltz has taken responsibility for creating the group and the accidental leak.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told investors in a closed-door meeting today he expects “there will be a de-escalation” in Trump’s trade war with China in the “very near future,” a person in the room told CNBC.

“The next steps with China are, no one thinks the current status quo is sustainable” with tariff rates at their current levels, Bessent said at a private investor summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by JPMorgan Chase.

Stocks, already recovering from the prior day’s sell off, soared higher after Bessent’s remarks were first reported.

Read more from CNBC.

The Supreme Court appeared likely to rule for parents who objected to books made available in a school district’s elementary schools that feature stories about gay and transgender characters.

Members of the 6-3 conservative majority, which often backs religious rights, seemed sympathetic during the lively two-and-a-half-hour oral argument toward the claims made by the parents that the Montgomery County Board of Education violated their religious rights by failing to provide an opt-out for their children.

Some justices indicated that the board’s refusal to provide an opt-out might have been motivated by hostility toward religion.

Read the full NBC News story here.

Former Vice President Al Gore rebuked the Trump administration in remarks at a climate crisis conference Monday night, comparing its “ongoing attacks on liberty” to Nazi Germany.

In his comments at the San Francisco Climate Week conference, Gore argued that the Trump administration’s “scale and scope of the ongoing attacks on liberty are literally unprecedented.”

“With that in mind, I want to note that before I use what is not a precedent, I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement — it was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it, but there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil,” Gore said.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com

Hegseth this morning doubled down on his argument that he didn't do anything wrong in the second Signal chat involving military plans in Yemen that was revealed this week.

"What was shared over Signal, then and now, however you characterize it, was informal, unclassified coordinations for media coordination, other things. That’s what I’ve said from the beginning," he said in an interview on Fox News.

Hegseth said that he takes the classification of information seriously and it's important to safeguard it. He again pushed the idea that the new reporting about the second Signal chat was improperly disclosed to the media by former employees who are "attempting to leak and sabotage the president's agenda and what we're doing."

"Everything we do here is aboveboard," he said. "We're for the war fighters. We're for the president and none of this is based in reality."

The defense secretary, who didn't directly deny that he shared the sensitive information with his wife and his brother, said that the leak investigation into the former employees is ongoing. He said that once evidence is sufficiently gathered, it will be handed over to the Justice Department "and those people will be prosecuted if necessary."

A class action lawsuit filed Friday in New Hampshire asks a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students caught up in a Trump administration crackdown that has left more than a thousand fearful of deportation.

The suit filed by several American Civil Liberties Union affiliates seeks to represent more than 100 students in New England and Puerto Rico.

“International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire.

At schools around the country, students have seen their visas revoked or their legal status terminated, typically with little notice.

Read the full story here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled he was open to ceasefire talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy as pressure from the Trump administration ramps up to secure a peace deal.

“We need to sort this out,” Putin told a Russian state TV reporter on Monday. “Maybe even bilaterally.”

His comments came after a senior U.S. official told NBC News that this week was “critically important” when it came to securing a truce between the two sides that have been at war for over three years since Putin launched an invasion of his western neighbor in February 2022.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared to shift responsibility onto Ukraine, telling a press briefing that Kyiv “must attempt steps to clear the way” for talks. He added that Putin “has repeatedly spoken about his readiness to resolve the issue through negotiations.” However there is little evidence Putin has moved away from his core war goals: cementing his land grabs in Ukraine and stopping the country from joining NATO.

Read the complete story at NBCNews.com.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday considers the latest dispute that pits religious rights against LGBTQ rights as the justices weigh parents' objections over books made available in a school district's elementary schools that feature stories about gay and transgender characters.

At issue are books included in the English language arts curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland. The dispute arose in 2022 after the school board in Montgomery County, a large and diverse jurisdiction just outside Washington, decided it wanted more storybooks reflecting LGBTQ stories to better reflect the people who live there.

One book, "Uncle Bobby’s Wedding," features a gay character who is getting married. Another, called "Born Ready," is about a transgender child who wants to identify as a boy.

Some parents objected on religious grounds under the Constitution's First Amendment, saying their children should be able to opt out of any exposure to the content.

Read the full story here.

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., launched her campaign for the Senate on Tuesday, joining a Democratic primary that is shaping up to be one of the most competitive in the country next year — in a tightly divided state also set to be a competitive Senate battleground in the midterm elections.  

Stevens joins state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic primary for retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters' seat, which Democrats must hold to have any hope of capturing the Senate majority next year.  

Stevens launched her campaign by focusing on the state's crucial auto industry and took aim in her announcement video at President Donald Trump, who carried Michigan by 1 percentage point in November.

Stevens touted her work in former President Barack Obama’s administration as the chief of staff for the White House Auto Task Force to bail out the auto industry, featuring video of Obama praising her work.

Read the full NBC News story here.

U.S. stocks tumbled and bonds sold off Monday after President Donald Trump lobbed new insults at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, pressuring him to cut interest rates while markets are already contending with shocks from his tariff policy.

The S&P closed down 2.4%. Since its February highs, the index is now off 16%, approaching bear market territory of a 20% decline.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell more than 2.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost almost 1,000 points, or 2.5%. The yield of the 10-year U.S. Treasury note surged to 4.41%, its highest level in more than a week.

All three indexes are down more than 9% since Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs announcement.

Read the full NBC News story here