White House says some employees were fired by mistake

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday he stands by his comments from Brussels earlier this week on it being unrealistic for Ukraine to be offered NATO membership as part of a settlement, for it to regain its pre-2014 territory, or for U.S. troops to enter the country to keep the peace.

"My job today, and in Brussels, was to introduce realism to the conversation – the reality that returning to 2014 borders as part of a negotiated settlement is unlikely; the reality of U.S. troops in Ukraine is unlikely; the reality of Ukraine membership in NATO as a part of a negotiated settlement unlikely. And I stand by the comments that I made on that first day in the Ukraine Contact Group," Hegseth said at a press conference in Poland Friday.

Hegseth was much more definitive on Wednesday in Belgium, taking the idea of U.S. boots on the ground off the table.

"To be clear as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine," he said on Wednesday.

However, on Friday, Vance said the option of sending U.S. troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained "on the table," according to the Wall Street Journal.

"There are economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage" the U.S. could use against Putin, Vance said, according to the WSJ

-ABC News' Matthew Seyler

The fate of the Russia-Ukraine war is set to take the spotlight on Friday as U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are expected to meet later Friday afternoon in Munich.

Originally scheduled to meet Friday morning, a member of the Ukrainian delegation confirmed to ABC News that their meeting will now take place after 5 p.m. local time in Munich (11 a.m. ET).

Ukrainian officials have presented adjustments to a U.S. plan to gain access to Ukraine’s mineral resources in exchange for $500 billion in weapons and ammunition. The plan was initially presented by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukrainian authorities in Kyiv two days ago.

Meanwhile, Vance engaged in a bilateral meeting with the NATO Secretary General at the Munich Security Conference, noting the "president's desire to see NATO spend a little bit more resources on defense," a point also being echoed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth while he continues to meet with his counterparts in Poland.

Vance also wants to ensure "NATO is built for future," and said he wished that "NATO does a little bit more burden sharing in Europe, so the United States can focus on some of our challenges in these stages."

Secretary General Rutte agreed with Vance in regard to "Europe stepping up."

"We have to grow up in that sense and spend much more," Rutte said.

A federal judge has temporarily halted the Trump administration’s sweeping 90-day foreign aid freeze, delivering a rebuke to one of President Donald Trump’s most ambitious and consequential executive actions.

The aid groups that sued the Trump administration – including the State Department and USAID – earlier this week over the president’s Jan. 20 executive order successfully argued that the aid freeze “will continue to have a catastrophic effect on the humanitarian missions of several plaintiffs,” U.S. Judge Amir Ali, a Biden-era appointee, wrote in an order late Thursday.

Ali issued a narrowly tailored temporary restraining order that prohibits the Trump administration from cutting off congressionally appropriated foreign aid or canceling any contracts for federal foreign aid assistance. He notably declined to issue a broader order that would block enforcement of Trump’s day-one executive order reevaluating foreign aid because the president does have the right to “conduct a comprehensive internal review of government programs.”

“To be sure, there is nothing arbitrary and capricious about executive agencies conducting a review of programs,” Ali wrote before turning to the consequences of the funding freeze. “But there has been no explanation offered in the record…as to why reviewing programs—many long standing and taking place pursuant to contractual terms— required an immediate and wholesale suspension of appropriated foreign aid.”

Ali had harsh words for the government’s decision to freeze foreign aid en masse, which he said “set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country.”

-ABC News' Lucien Bruggeman, Katherine Faulders and Peter Charalambous

More than 1,000 new workers were dismissed as part of the new wave of layoffs, the Department of Veterans Affairs said in a statement Thursday evening.

-ABC News' Ben Siegel