Air Force Gen. Dan Caine has been sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after a flurry of paperwork was finished to allow him to fill the job nearly two months after President Donald Trump fired his predecessor.

A formal White House ceremony is expected to take place this week.

In a message to the force posted on the Joint Staff website, Caine said “the most important thing you should know from me is that I trust you. I trust you — to make hard decisions, to persevere in adversity, and to do the right thing.”

He added that the U.S. military needs to be properly armed, globally integrated and ready to fight and win the nation’s wars. And to do so, he said, the force must keep pace with technological and strategic changes, foster innovation and be ready to adapt.

Caine, a decorated F-16 fighter pilot and well-respected officer, took over on Saturday after Trump signed the necessary documents. He will serve the remainder of the four-year term of Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who was fired by Trump as part of a broader purge of military officers believed to endorse diversity and equity programs.

Greene reports well-timed stock trades

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., disclosed on Monday that she had purchased thousands of dollars worth of stock on April 8 and 9, the day before and the day of President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was pausing a sweeping set of global tariffs, a pivot that sent the stock market soaring out of a sizable slump.

Greene bought between about $21,000 and $315,000 in stocks on those days. The day before Trump’s move, she also dumped between $50,000 and $100,000 in Treasury bills, according to required public disclosures made to the House.

The report came as Democrats in Congress have demanded investigations of whether the president’s whipsawing moves on trade might have been aimed at manipulating the market and giving his allies a lucrative opportunity for insider trading.

Members of Congress are required to report their stock trades within 30 days of making them, though they only have to mark down broad ranges rather than specific dollar amounts.

Greene did not respond to a request for comment.

Proposal would cut State Dept. 50%

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has proposed gutting the State Department’s budget by almost 50%, closing a number of overseas diplomatic missions, slashing the number of diplomatic staff, and eliminating funding for nearly all international organizations, including the United Nations, many of its agencies and for NATO headquarters, officials said.

The proposal, which was presented to the State Department last week and is still in a highly preliminary phase, is not expected to pass muster with either the department’s leadership or Congress, which will ultimately be asked to vote on the entire federal budget in the coming months.

Officials familiar with the proposal say it must still go through several rounds of review before it even gets to lawmakers, who in the past have amended and even rejected White House budget requests.

Man arrested as he applied for citizenship

A Palestinian man who led protests against the war in Gaza as a student at Columbia University was arrested Monday at a Vermont immigration office where he showed up expecting to be interviewed about finalizing his U.S. citizenship, his attorneys said.

Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident who has held a green card since 2015, was detained at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester, Vt., by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, his lawyers said.

The attorneys said they do not know where he is. They filed a petition in federal court seeking an order barring the government from removing him from the state or country.

According to the court filing, Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and was expected to graduate in May before beginning a master’s degree program there in the fall. The petition describes him as a committed Buddhist who believes in “non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion.”

AP still on White House non-invite list

Despite a court order, a reporter and photographer from The Associated Press were barred from an Oval Office news conference on Monday with President Donald Trump and his counterpart from El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

Last week’s federal court decision forbidding the Trump administration from punishing the AP for refusing to acknowledge Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico was to take effect Monday. The administration is appealing the decision and arguing with the news outlet over whether it needs to change anything until those appeals are exhausted.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit set a Thursday hearing on Trump’s request that any changes be delayed while case is reviewed. The AP is fighting for more access as soon as possible.The AP has seen sporadic access elsewhere, and regularly covers White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s briefings.

ICE agents tackle man at courthouse

A Venezuelan man facing misdemeanor charges in New Hampshire was apprehended in a courthouse by federal agents who also knocked over a bystander as they tackled him.

Recently released security camera footage from Nashua Circuit Court shows two agents throwing Arnuel Marquez Colmenarez to the floor and handcuffing him on Feb. 20.

Marquez Colmenarez, 33, had been charged Feb. 9 with drunken driving, driving without a license and failing to provide information after an accident. He was heading to his arraignment on those charges when he was apprehended, Nashua Police say.

— From news services