{"id":328,"date":"2025-02-10T22:53:56","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/02\/10\/trump-administration-live-updates-news-on-tariffs-funding-freeze-order-and-more-the-new-york-times\/"},"modified":"2025-02-10T22:53:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:53:56","slug":"trump-administration-live-updates-news-on-tariffs-funding-freeze-order-and-more-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/2025\/02\/10\/trump-administration-live-updates-news-on-tariffs-funding-freeze-order-and-more-the-new-york-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Live Updates: News on Tariffs, Funding Freeze Order and More – The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Ana<\/a><\/p>\n

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Ana Swanson<\/a><\/p>\n

Ana Swanson has written about international trade for over a decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Trump imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A wholesale steel market in Shenyang, China, last year. U.S. metal makers have been lobbying the Trump administration for protection against foreign competition.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum on Monday, re-upping a policy from his first term that pleased domestic metal makers, but hurt other American industries and ignited trade wars with allies on multiple fronts.<\/p>\n

The president signed two official proclamations Monday evening that would impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum from all countries globally. A White House official said in a call with reporters that there would be no exclusions offered, and that the president was directing customs officials to dramatically increase their oversight over such imports.<\/p>\n

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The measures will be welcomed by domestic steelmakers, who argue they are struggling to compete against cheap foreign metals. As they did during Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, U.S. metal makers have been lobbying the administration for protection, and Trump officials agree that a strong domestic metal sector is essential for U.S. national security.<\/p>\n

But the tariffs will invite plenty of controversy. They are likely to rankle America\u2019s allies, like Canada and Mexico, who supply the bulk of U.S. metal imports. And they could incite retaliation on U.S. exports, as well as pushback from American industries that use metals to make cars, food packaging and other products. Those sectors will face significantly higher prices after the tariffs go into effect.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened in Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, when he slapped 25 percent tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. While he and President Biden eventually ended up rolling back those tariffs on most major metal suppliers, they were often replaced with other trade barriers, like quotas. Studies have shown that while the measures helped U.S. metal makers, they ended up hurting the broader economy, because they raised prices for many other industries.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump seemed to disregard that history on Sunday. As he flew to the Super Bowl aboard Air Force One, he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum on all imports. He also said that he would move forward with so-called reciprocal tariffs, which would raise certain U.S. tariff rates to match those of foreign countries, later this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery simply, if they charge us, we charge them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The promise of steel tariffs have followed other intense trade threats. In his three weeks in office, the president has already threatened more tariffs globally than he did in his entire first term, when he ended up imposing tariffs on foreign solar panels, washing machines, metals and more than $300 billion of products from China.<\/p>\n

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has put an additional 10 percent tariff<\/a> on all products from China, and came within hours of imposing sweeping tariffs<\/a> on Canada and Mexico that would have brought U.S. tariff rates to a level not seen since the 1940s<\/a>. Together, those moves would have affected more than $1.3 trillion of goods.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump has also said in recent days that he planned to slap tariffs on Europe, Taiwan and other governments, as well as on a variety of critical industries like copper, steel, aluminum, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.<\/p>\n

American steelmakers welcomed the tariffs. In a statement Sunday, Kevin Dempsey, the president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, said that the group welcomed Mr. Trump\u2019s \u201ccontinued commitment to a strong American steel industry, which is essential to America\u2019s national security and economic prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president has targeted foreign metals before. In his first term, the president levied tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum globally, angering allies like Mexico, Canada and the European Union.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump reached agreements with Australia, South Korea and Brazil, and rolled back some of those barriers on Canada and Mexico when they signed a revised trade agreement with the United States. The Biden administration later reached agreements with the European Union, the United Kingdom and Japan to roll back some of their trade restrictions.<\/p>\n

The new measures will mainly affect U.S. allies. The largest supplier of steel to the United States in 2024 was Canada, followed by Brazil, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam, according to the American Iron and Steel Institute. Canada is also a major supplier of aluminum to the United States, followed distantly by the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China.<\/p>\n

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The ArcelorMittal Dofasco steel plant in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The country was the biggest supplier of steel to the United States in 2024.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Joe Raedle\/Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The United States imports very little steel or aluminum directly from China, since Chinese exports have long been blocked by a variety of anti-dumping and subsidy tariffs. But some argue that China\u2019s excess steel production is still flooding other markets and pushing down global prices, leaving U.S. metal makers at a disadvantage in other markets.<\/p>\n

Amid its financial struggles, U.S. Steel, the iconic Pennsylvania company, had agreed to be acquired by Nippon Steel of Japan. That merger was blocked by President Biden, who said he wanted to U.S. Steel to remain an American company.<\/p>\n

Nazak Nikakhtar, a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein and a former official in the first Trump administration, said that the president was again \u201cmaking good on his promise to impose tariffs globally and to increase tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, given their criticality to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the new tariffs would be added to existing tariffs on steel and aluminum, and it remained to be seen if there would be any exceptions, for example for Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n

Some economists argue that tariffs on raw materials like steel are more likely to negatively affect the economy, since they raise prices for other manufacturers.<\/p>\n

A study<\/a> by the nonpartisan International Trade Commission, for example, found that the steel and aluminum tariffs increased the price of imports, and encouraged consumers of steel and aluminum to buy more American metals as opposed to foreign ones. The increase in demand further pushed up metal prices, and allowed American metal makers to expand their production, resulting in $2.25 billion of additional U.S. production of steel and aluminum in 2021.<\/p>\n

But the policy had an important downside, the study shows. The higher prices of steel and aluminum translated into higher costs for downstream industries that buy those metals to make other things. The higher costs were particularly painful for companies making industrial machinery, car parts and hand tools.<\/p>\n

Altogether, industries that consume steel and aluminum saw their production shrink by $3.48 billion as a result of the tariffs \u2014 more than offsetting what the steel and aluminum makers had gained.<\/p>\n

Some in the U.S. metal industries say that the levies have not gone far enough. They argue that metal imports from other countries, like Mexico, started to surge shortly after tariffs were rolled back as part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement signed in 2020.<\/p>\n

Zach Mottl, the chairman of the Coalition for Prosperous America, which supports the metal tariffs, said these trends were evidence that tariffs needed to be expanded, not reduced, to protect downstream industries in the United States as well.<\/p>\n

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A worker at Trefilados Inoxidables de Mexico, which exports stainless steel wire, aluminum, nickel alloys and solders to the United States. Tariffs are rankling America\u2019s allies, including Canada and Mexico.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Hector Lorenzo\/Reuters<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to create a market for all the inputs in the supply chain and then the final product, too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Others industries are concerned about being caught in the crossfire, and targeted with tariffs as other countries retaliate. China imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, coal, farm machinery and other products on Monday in response to the tariffs Mr. Trump put on China last week because of its role in the fentanyl trade.<\/p>\n

Mexico, Canada and the European Union have all drawn up lists of American products they could strike with their own levies in response to U.S. measures.<\/p>\n

In response to Mr. Trump\u2019s first metal tariffs, for example, the European Union imposed a 25 percent tariff on American whiskey. The American and European governments negotiated a deal to temporarily suspend those tariffs that is set to expire soon. If another agreement is not reached, the European Union is set to double that tariff<\/a> to 50 percent on April 1.<\/p>\n

Chris Swonger, the chief executive of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said in a statement that the tariff would have a \u201ccatastrophic outcome\u201d for 3,000 small distilleries across the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are urging that the U.S. and E.U. move swiftly to find a resolution,\u201d Mr. Swonger said. \u201cOur great American whiskey industry is at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colby Smith contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Shawn<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump announced on social media that he had appointed a member of his first administration, Richard Grenell, as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center. The president wrote that Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, acting national intelligence chief and special envoy to the Balkans, shared his vision \u201cfor a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Trump administration is appealing<\/a> an order issued on Jan. 29 by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island, which instructed the federal government to release billions of dollars in frozen federal funding. The administration has now asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to stay McConnell\u2019s order<\/a> while the case is being heard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Advertisement<\/p>\n

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\"Sheryl<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge said he would soon decide whether to order the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies to temporarily restore websites taken down in response to President Trump\u2019s executive order to withdraw information<\/a> mentioning \u201cgender identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The doctors contend the removal of the web pages, which included information about including sexually transmitted diseases, impedes their ability to treat patients. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Sheryl<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Judge John D. Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia heard from lawyers for the activist group Doctors for America and the Justice Department. The doctors group asked for a temporary restraining order that would allow the sites to be restored while the case is being considered. The judge plans to decide later on Monday or Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Noah<\/a>\"Maya<\/a><\/p>\n

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Noah Weiland<\/a> and Maya Shwayder<\/a><\/p>\n

Noah Weiland reported from Washington, and Maya Shwayder from inside the federal courthouse in Boston.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A judge is keeping a pause on a program offering federal workers incentives to quit.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A protest in Washington against Elon Musk\u2019s plans to slash the size of the federal government. Mr. Musk and President Trump have faced a series of legal setbacks in recent days.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Tierney L. Cross for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge said on Monday that the Trump administration\u2019s deferred resignation program would remain paused until he ruled on its legality, hours before a deadline for roughly two million federal workers to accept incentives to quit.<\/p>\n

Federal officials had set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Monday for employees to join the resignation program, known as \u201cFork in the Road<\/a>,\u201d part of an Elon Musk-led initiative to drastically slash the size of the federal government. Federal workers who take the offer would receive pay through September, according to the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

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George A. O\u2019Toole Jr., a U.S. District Court judge in the District of Massachusetts, last week stopped the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government\u2019s human resources agency, from moving ahead with the program until Monday\u2019s hearing, forcing the government to adjust its deadline for employees to accept the offer.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear when Judge O\u2019Toole would rule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe program is NOT being blocked or canceled,\u201d the agency wrote in a social media post<\/a> last week. \u201cThe government will honor the deferred resignation offer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has said that<\/a> more than 65,000 federal workers accepted the deferred resignation offer, representing less than 3 percent of all 2.3 million federal workers, excluding the military and the Postal Service. Mr. Musk, who is spearheading the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to whittle down the federal government, had circulated an estimate<\/a> that the offer could lure 5 to 10 percent of the federal work force to leave.<\/p>\n

Roughly 150,000 federal workers, or 7 percent, voluntarily leave the government every year.<\/p>\n

The liberal nonprofit Democracy Forward and government unions representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers \u2014 the American Federation of Government Employees; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; and the National Association of Government Employees \u2014 had sued to stop the resignation program. They argued that it was unlawful in part because Congress had not yet appropriated funds to compensate workers the Trump administration was promising to pay.<\/p>\n

Congress faces a mid-March deadline for a new spending deal, which could hold up any potential funds used to pay federal workers who resign.<\/p>\n

Judge O\u2019Toole last week instructed lawyers representing the Trump administration to contact employees who had received the offer and inform them that the program was paused. The original deadline of 11:59 p.m. last Thursday was pushed back.<\/p>\n

Elena Goldstein, a lawyer for Democracy Forward, told Judge O\u2019Toole on Monday that the Trump administration\u2019s resignation program was arbitrary and devised to pressure federal workers without collective bargaining rights. The program, she argued, was a pretense for Mr. Musk to fire people and fill the ranks of government agencies with his associates.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was issued in blanket fashion without analysis of which positions were no longer needed or vital to government,\u201d she said, adding that the federal government could continue to change the terms of its offer until the last minute. Personnel officials, she said, appeared to be \u201cmaking this up as they go along.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric Hamilton, a Trump administration lawyer, defended the program, saying that President Trump\u2019s vows to reshape the federal government may come as a \u201cdisappointment\u201d to agency employees, but that the resignation offer was a \u201chumane off-ramp\u201d that temporarily preserved salary and benefits.<\/p>\n

The federal personnel office, Mr. Hamilton said, needed to move ahead with a broader reorganization once the deferred resignation program ended, and needed to know conclusively who wanted to participate.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolding it open would only inject more uncertainty,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump administration officials have argued that concerns about the legality of the plan<\/a> were \u201cmisplaced,\u201d and that separation agreements would be legally binding.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnion leaders and politicians telling federal workers to reject this offer are doing them a serious disservice,\u201d McLaurine Pinover, a spokeswoman for the Office of Personnel Management, said in a statement last week. \u201cThis is a rare, generous opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vague conditions of the offer, and its uncertain legality, had already caused widespread confusion in the federal work force. The Social Security Administration\u2019s human resources office emailed employees a sample agreement, which featured a stipulation that a lapse in federal funds would not affect the deal. But the agreement also noted that the administration\u2019s obligations \u201care subject to the availability of appropriations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some federal workers, including those with probationary status<\/a> who could be fired soon, may find the program attractive, leading them to weigh whether the deal would offer some financial security.<\/p>\n

The hearing before Judge O\u2019Toole on Monday was the latest turn in the Trump administration\u2019s blitz of actions seeking to curtail and slash the federal work force. Over the weekend, employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were ordered to stay home and halt nearly all their work<\/a>, including their supervision of banks, as Mr. Musk and a team of young aides<\/a> hunted for large cuts.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have faced a series of legal setbacks<\/a> in recent days. On Monday, a federal judge said that the White House had defied his order<\/a> to release billions of dollars in federal grants.<\/p>\n

A federal judge in New York restricted access by Mr. Musk\u2019s team<\/a> to the Treasury Department\u2019s payment and data systems. And a judge in New Hampshire issued an injunction on Monday<\/a> blocking Mr. Trump\u2019s executive order on birthright citizenship, the third federal judge to do so.<\/p>\n

On Friday, just before U.S. Agency for International Development workers were set to have been suspended with pay or laid off, a court issued a temporary order<\/a> that allowed employees already on administrative leave to be reinstated until the end of this Friday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Chris<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Days after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reinstate employees<\/a> at the United States Agency for International Development who were placed on administrative leave, the union representing those employees accused the Trump administration in a court filing of failing to comply with parts of the order. The unions said that some employees placed on leave in January are still locked out of computer systems at the agency.<\/p>\n

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Credit…<\/span>Kayla Bartkowski\/Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"Sheryl<\/a>\"Christina<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

States sue to stop a $4 billion cut to medical research funding.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Md., last year.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Hailey Sadler for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Nearly two dozen states sued the Trump administration and the National Institutes of Health on Monday to block a $4 billion cut<\/a> to research funding that scientists say would cost thousands of jobs and eviscerate studies into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer\u2019s, heart disease and a host of other ailments.<\/p>\n

The funding cuts were to take effect Monday. The attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states filed the suit, arguing the Trump administration\u2019s plan to slash overhead costs \u2014 known as \u201cindirect costs\u201d \u2014 violates a 79-year-old law that governs how administrative agencies establish and administer regulations.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWithout relief from N.I.H.\u2019s action, these institutions\u2019 cutting-edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt,\u201d the lawsuit said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Capitol Hill, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the chairwoman of the chamber\u2019s Appropriations Committee, strongly objected to what she called \u201cthese arbitrary cuts.\u201d Ms. Collins, a Republican, said that when she called President Trump\u2019s nominee for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to complain, he promised to \u201cre-examine this initiative\u201d if confirmed.<\/p>\n

The filing is the latest in a string of lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump\u2019s policies. Also on Monday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to \u201cimmediately restore\u201d trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, including from the N.I.H., that had been frozen under a sweeping directive<\/a> the president issued, and later rescinded<\/a>, late last month.<\/p>\n

Scientists, medical researchers and public health officials have felt under siege since Mr. Trump became president. In addition to freezing grant dollars and slashing overhead costs, the administration has blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from publishing scientific information on the threat of bird flu<\/a> to humans.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit filed Monday involves a change, announced Friday by the N.I.H., in the formula that the government uses to determine the share of grant dollars that can go toward overhead costs. Those expenses include lighting, heating and building maintenance, but also the upkeep of sophisticated equipment that is too expensive for any single laboratory to buy on its own.<\/p>\n

The plan would cost the University of California system hundreds of millions annually, the system\u2019s president, Dr. Michael V. Drake, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cA cut this size is nothing short of catastrophic for countless Americans who depend on U.C.\u2019s scientific advances to save lives and improve health care,\u201d Dr. Drake said in a statement Monday. \u201cThis is not only an attack on science, but on America\u2019s health writ large. We must stand up against this harmful, misguided action.\u201d<\/p>\n

State officials are also concerned that the cuts could harm their economies. Massachusetts prides itself on being the \u201cmedical research capital of the country,\u201d the state attorney general, Andrea Joy Campbell, a Democrat, said in announcing the suit<\/a>, adding, \u201cWe will not allow the Trump administration to unlawfully undermine our economy, hamstring our competitiveness, or play politics with our public health.\u201d<\/p>\n

The N.I.H. awarded $4.5 billion in research funds in Massachusetts in recent years, including for research on pancreatic cancer, hypertension and severe asthma. The N.I.H. also sent about $5 billion to New York. The cut is expected to cost the state about $850 million, the lawsuit said.<\/p>\n

Last year, the N.I.H. said, $9 billion of $35 billion<\/a> \u2014 or about 26 percent \u2014 of grant dollars it distributed went to overhead, or indirect costs. Some academic institutions devote 50 percent or more of their grant dollars to such costs. But the new policy would cap these \u201cindirect funds\u201d at 15 percent, saving $4 billion, the administration said.<\/p>\n

Slashing indirect funds was a goal of Project 2025, a set of right-wing policy proposals put forth by the Heritage Foundation as a blueprint for a second Trump administration. The project\u2019s report said the cuts \u201cwould help reduce federal taxpayer subsidization of leftist agendas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Administration officials and their allies cast the indirect costs as a taxpayer giveaway to elite universities whose large endowments, or outside funding from private foundations, could easily cover those costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump is doing away with Liberal DEI Deans\u2019 slush fund,\u201d Katie Miller, a member of the Elon Musk-led effort to slash the size of the federal government, wrote Friday on social media<\/a>. \u201cThis cuts just Harvard\u2019s outrageous price gouging by ~$250M\/ year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Lawrence O. Gostin, an expert in public health law at Georgetown University, said that many smaller academic institutions, including historically Black colleges and universities, do not have extra funds to cover those costs, and would have to scale back medical research if the 15 percent cap remained intact.<\/p>\n

An N.I.H. spokeswoman referred questions to its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, which is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. The department declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time a Trump administration has moved to cut the funds. In 2017, during Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, a similar proposal would have reduced the overhead payments to 10 percent of the award amount, according to Monday\u2019s lawsuit. The effort faltered.<\/p>\n

Congress then acted to \u201cward off\u201d a future effort and passed a budget bill that prohibited changing the fees from the levels that had been negotiated between federal officials and each research institution, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

People familiar with the negotiations said those deliberations are complex, lengthy affairs that involve costs for items like heating bills and personnel, backed by binders full of supporting records. The lawsuit claims that the administration cannot make indiscriminate changes to the action that Congress took. It also said the notice announcing the rate change violated the Administrative Procedure Act in multiple ways.<\/p>\n

The proposed changes have been jarring to universities, which had already finalized budgets assuming that the funds would arrive. The changes were announced Friday and were to take effect Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere just isn\u2019t anywhere near that much discretionary money floating around anywhere,\u201d said Jeremy Berg, a former N.I.H. division director who oversaw general medical research. \u201cThe only thing that a university could do is do less research and start firing staff and faculty. And it would be devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cuts\u2019 largest effect would hit the University of California system, which the lawsuit said gets $2 billion in N.I.H. research funds for numerous universities and cancer treatment centers. The funds have supported groundbreaking research there, including the invention of gene editing and the first radiation treatment for cancer, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

While lawsuits against the Trump administration have tended to be dominated by Democratic-led states, this case also has places that more recently favored Mr. Trump in the election.<\/p>\n

They include North Carolina, which gets about $3.7 billion in N.I.H. research funding awarded to schools like Duke, the University of North Carolina and Wake Forest. Dr. Robert Lefkowitz, who is a professor of medicine at Duke and a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said in an interview over the weekend that \u201ca lot of research will just have to stop\u201d if the cuts go through.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine a better use of taxpayer money,\u201d he said of the funding.<\/p>\n

Michigan, a presidential swing state that Mr. Trump carried in November, also sued, citing a probable loss of $181 million in funding to the University of Michigan alone. The lawsuit said the university has 425 N.I.H.-funded trials underway focused on several diseases, \u201cincluding 161 trials aimed at saving lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit also included the presidential battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin. The cuts, according to the lawsuit, would carve $65 million from the budget of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which is studying adult and pediatric cancer, diabetes and degenerative neurological diseases and other conditions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Minho<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The White House shields the work of Musk\u2019s team, letting it skirt open records laws.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The White House has designated Elon Musk\u2019s office, United States DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention until at least 2034.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

In October, Elon Musk preached the message of government transparency<\/a> during a presidential campaign rally he held in Pennsylvania in support of Donald J. Trump, suggesting that nearly all government records should be made public.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere should be no need for FOIA requests,\u201d Mr. Musk reiterated on social media<\/a>, referring to the law that gives the public the right to obtain copies of federal agency records: the Freedom of Information Act. \u201cAll government data should be default public for maximum transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n

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But Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting initiative, better known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appears to be heading in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

The White House has designated Mr. Musk\u2019s office, United States DOGE Service, as an entity insulated from public records requests or most judicial intervention until at least 2034, by declaring the documents it produces and receives presidential records.<\/p>\n

Katie Miller, an employee for the efficiency initiative, said on X<\/a> that Mr. Musk\u2019s office \u201cwas reorganized under the Executive Office of the President\u201d and was now \u201csubject to Presidential Records.\u201d<\/p>\n

That designation has a special legal meaning under a law called the Presidential Records Act. The law shields from the public all documents, communication trails and records from the president, his advisers and staff until five years after that president leaves office.<\/p>\n

That law still requires presidents to keep a broad set of written materials created or received by them while executing their duties. Nonetheless, presidents can also dispose of their records<\/a> after getting a written approval from the archivist at the National Archives, whom a president can remove from office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Mr. Trump fired the nation\u2019s archivist<\/a>, Colleen Shogan. No cause or reason was cited, Ms. Shogan said in her LinkedIn page post announcing her dismissal.<\/p>\n

Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman who also represents Mr. Musk\u2019s team, confirmed that Mr. Musk\u2019s initiative \u201cfalls under the Presidential Records Act\u201d but accused critics of categorically opposing Mr. Musk\u2019s measures to cut government spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats continue to veer further from reality in their hysteria over DOGE,\u201d he said. The efficiency initiative, he added, \u201caligns with its purpose to advise and assist the president on how to make government more efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Colleen Shogan, testifying at her nomination hearing in 2023, was fired by President Trump as the archivist of the National Archives.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Manuel Balce Ceneta\/Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Presidents have \u201ccomplete discretion\u201d over presidential records, said Anne Weismann, a law professor at George Washington University who oversaw public records litigations at the Justice Department at the end of her two decades at the department.<\/p>\n

Watchdog groups are likely to challenge the secrecy surrounding Mr. Musk\u2019s operation in lawsuits.<\/p>\n

During Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, federal courts recognized the president\u2019s exclusive authority over presidential records by ruling against nonprofits<\/a> that sought to stop his advisers from using private messengers<\/a> that automatically delete messages after a certain period.<\/p>\n

Critics are concerned that few oversight structures exist if Mr. Trump fails to preserve the records from Mr. Musk\u2019s cost-cutting initiative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are trying to insulate this entity and the enormous power it appears to be wielding from any kind of judicial interference and public scrutiny,\u201d Ms. Weismann said.<\/p>\n

If Mr. Trump chooses to get rid of all those records, there is not much recourse, she said, unless Congress decides to overhaul the Presidential Records Act.<\/p>\n

Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Musk has previously shown much respect for the preservation of government records and the public\u2019s right to see them.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump was known to tear up White House documents<\/a> and leave them on the floor during his first term, according to several former staff members. Politico reported in 2018<\/a> that some administration officials even had to tape back together shredded documents to ensure compliance with federal laws.<\/p>\n

Mr. Musk\u2019s commercial aerospace company, SpaceX, faced allegations that it has actively tried to avoid public records requests. Emails written by SpaceX employees to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service included a line that declared that they were exempt from public records<\/a> requests, as they contained \u201cconfidential business information and trade secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren Harper, who leads efforts for a more transparent federal government at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said that trade secrets are one of the legitimate grounds on which the federal government can deny a public records request or redact portions of documents upon release. But such blanket declarations from private companies do not suffice for redaction or denial and could be interpreted as an implicit effort to intimidate federal officials in charge of releasing documents, Ms. Harper said.<\/p>\n

SpaceX did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

The public records law that the White House says Mr. Musk\u2019s team is insulated from might ironically provide a legal remedy to accountability nonprofits seeking paper trails of the DOGE members.<\/p>\n

The federal courts have ruled<\/a> that White House entities that merely advise and assist the president are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a powerful law that presumes that government documents are public and must be produced upon written request unless they are subject to an exemption such as risking national security.<\/p>\n

But watchdogs could bring a public records lawsuit and argue that Mr. Musk\u2019s cost cutters are functioning as members of a separate federal agency that must answer to the FOIA, Ms. Weismann said.<\/p>\n

Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, said if courts determined that Mr. Musk\u2019s team was \u201cacting like a federal agency,\u201d not simply assisting and advising the president, then records from his office would be eligible for immediate public access.<\/p>\n

That could ultimately cause memos, spreadsheets, even some emails of Mr. Musk and his colleagues to be publicly released, though the federal government has long been slow in fulfilling such requests.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the words of the White House, substantively to me, it seems to be an agency,\u201d Ms. Weismann said. \u201cIt walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. Then it\u2019s a duck.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some records related to Mr. Musk\u2019s efforts might be released under FOIA by filing public records requests to individual agencies that receive DOGE emails or memos, but that would surely be a cumbersome and incomplete approach.<\/p>\n

At least two nonprofit watchdogs, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Center for Biological Diversity, have filed public records requests on Mr. Musk\u2019s team. Both groups said that they would file lawsuits against the Trump administration if it does not answer their records requests.<\/p>\n

\u201cI agree with Elon Musk because everything should be transparent,\u201d said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. \u201cBut that\u2019s the opposite of what we\u2019re getting.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Noah Weiland and Maya Shwayder<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday said the Trump administration\u2019s deferred resignation program would remain paused until he ruled on its legality. The news came hours before a deadline for roughly two million federal workers to accept incentives to quit: Federal officials had set an 11:59 p.m. deadline Monday for employees to join the resignation program, known as the \u201cFork in the Road<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Hamed<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Resettlement groups sue over Trump\u2019s pause on refugee admissions.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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A refugee from Afghanistan boarding a bus outside Dulles International Airport in 2021. The previously bipartisan refugee admissions program brought in tens of thousands of refugees regularly each year.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A coalition of some of the nation\u2019s largest refugee resettlement organizations on Monday sued the Trump administration over its indefinite pause of the refugee system, asking a federal court to move swiftly to restart the program.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Seattle, aims to immediately revive a system that had thrived for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations and to restart federal funding for organizations that help refugees resettle in the United States. It is the first suit to challenge the Trump administration\u2019s freeze of the program.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe impact of these executive actions has been sweeping and harmful for our refugee clients, our staff and our local faith community partners,\u201d Rick Santos, head of the Church World Service, one of the resettlement organizations that filed the suit, said in a statement. \u201cThese executive actions have abandoned refugee families both abroad and those who are already a part of our American communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who have been affected by the pause, Mr. Santos said, are two Afghan parents living in Massachusetts whose four children had been set to arrive in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey now do not know if or when their children will be able to come home,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One of President Trump\u2019s first actions on his first day in office was to freeze the refugee resettlement system with an executive action, contending that the country has seen an influx of immigrants in recent years and that communities across the United States were not in a position to welcome refugees.<\/p>\n

He ordered agency leaders at the Homeland Security and State Departments to recommend whether to restart the program within 90 days.<\/p>\n

The previously bipartisan refugee admissions program brought in tens of thousands of refugees regularly each year from countries like Burma and Syria. Refugees must prove that they face persecution in their home countries.<\/p>\n

Foreign nationals seeking to enter the United States as refugees go through significant vetting, including interviews, security checks, medical screenings and many other forms of scrutiny on their applications.<\/p>\n

That changed when Mr. Trump first took office, in 2017. His administration cracked down on illegal immigration at the southern border and restricted asylum claims, while also targeting the refugee system and cutting admissions significantly. By the last year of his first term, Mr. Trump proposed a record low 15,000 refugee admissions.<\/p>\n

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. revived the program, and last year saw the arrival of around 100,000 refugees, the highest total in decades.<\/p>\n

The new halt on refugee resettlement has quickly had an impact: More than 10,000 refugees were in a pipeline to travel to the United States when it went into effect. Soon after, U.S. officials notified<\/a> resettlement groups that refugee flights were canceled.<\/p>\n

A 22-year-old refugee from Congo whose flight was canceled after a two-year application process to resettle in the United States is one of the plaintiffs in the suit filed on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sold almost all of his possessions, other than the things that can fit in the two bags that they\u2019re allowed to bring with them,\u201d said Melissa Keaney, a lawyer with the International Refugee Assistance Project, who helped file the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow they\u2019re in this indefinite period of not knowing how to both rebuild their lives in Nairobi and for how long of a period they should expect it to remain there while the suspension is in place,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it\u2019s just been really devastating for refugees who expected to be able to travel imminently and now are seeing their travel canceled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lawsuit also aims to resume federal funding of refugee resettlement organizations, which ground to a halt on Jan. 24, four days after Mr. Trump took office. The groups argue that they rely on those funds to help refugees obtain housing, food and other necessities as they rebuild their lives in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Mr. Santos said that his organization, Church World Service, had to put more than half of its U.S.-based staff on furlough because of the pause in funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have more than 4,000 refugee clients who have arrived in our communities within 90 days of the ban taking effect, who we are now struggling to provide the core services that they are entitled to under U.S. law,\u201d he said. \u201cThese services ensure they have safe and affordable housing, medical care and employment support so that they can get a great start and quickly become contributing members of their new communities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"John<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, signed a memorandum that blocks the recruitment of men and women who report a history of gender dysphoria \u2014 the medical term used to describe men and women who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth. The memo also blocks any active duty personnel from receiving hormonal therapies or obtaining surgical procedures \u201cassociated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Credit…<\/span>Paul Ratje for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\"John<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Soldiers with gender dysphoria \u201chave volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect,\u201d Hegseth wrote after noting an executive order signed by President Trump on Jan. 27 that says transgender men and women \u201ccannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.\u201d The Pentagon did not immediately respond to questions about the memo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge says the White House failed to comply with his order to unfreeze funds.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The White House has engaged in a flurry of executive orders that have been challenged in court.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge on Monday said the White House has defied his order to release billions of dollars in federal grants, marking the first time a judge has expressly declared that the Trump White House was disobeying a judicial mandate.<\/p>\n

The ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr.<\/a> in Rhode Island federal court ordered Trump administration officials to comply with what he called \u201cthe plain text\u201d of an edict he issued on Jan. 29.<\/p>\n

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That order, he wrote, was \u201cclear and unambiguous, and there are no impediments to the Defendants\u2019 compliance with\u201d it. <\/p>\n

Judge McConnell\u2019s ruling marked a step toward what could quickly evolve into a high-stakes showdown between the executive and judicial branches, a day after a social media<\/a> post by Vice President JD Vance claimed that \u201cjudges aren\u2019t allowed to control the executive\u2019s legitimate power,\u201d elevating the chance that the White House could provoke a constitutional crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very rare for a president not to comply with an order,\u201d said Victoria Nourse, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who served during the Obama and Biden administrations. \u201cThis is part of a pattern where President Trump appears to be asserting authority that he doesn\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for some of President Trump\u2019s allies, it is the judges ruling against Mr. Trump who are out of bounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cActivist judges must stop illegally meddling with the President\u2019s Article II powers,\u201d wrote Mike Davis, who heads the Article III Project<\/a>, a conservative advocacy group.<\/p>\n

Already, more than 40 lawsuits<\/a> have been filed against the Trump administration challenging Mr. Trump\u2019s brazen moves, which have included revoking birthright citizenship and giving Elon Musk\u2019s teams access to sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. Judges have already ruled that many of these executive actions may violate existing statutes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge McConnell previously ordered the White House to unfreeze federal funds locked up by a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget<\/a> that demanded that billions of dollars in federal grants be held back until they were determined to comply with President Trump\u2019s priorities, including with ideological litmus tests<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Friday, 22 Democratic attorneys general went to Judge McConnell to accuse the White House of failing to comply with his earlier order. The Justice Department responded in a filing on Sunday<\/a> that money for clean energy projects and transportation infrastructure, allocated to states by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, was exempt from the initial order because it had been paused under a different memo than the one that prompted the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Judge McConnell\u2019s ruling on Monday<\/a> explicitly rejected that argument. <\/p>\n

The judge granted the attorneys generals\u2019 request for a \u201cmotion for enforcement\u201d \u2014 essentially a nudge. It did not find that the Trump administration was in contempt of court or specify any penalties for failing to comply.<\/p>\n

However, the judge was straightforward in his finding that an initial temporary restraining order that he issued Jan. 29<\/a> was not being followed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese pauses in funding violate the plain text of the T.R.O.,\u201d Judge McConnell wrote. That earlier ruling ordered the administration not to \u201cpause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate\u201d money that had already been allocated by Congress to the states to pay for Medicaid, school lunches, low-income housing subsidies and other essential services.<\/p>\n

It was still not clear how the White House would respond. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, suggested the president would ultimately prevail in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach executive order will hold up in court because every action of the Trump-Vance administration is completely lawful,\u201d he said. \u201cAny legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Judge McConnell made clear that White House officials were obligated to comply regardless of how they thought the case might conclude. In his ruling on Monday, the judge quoted an opinion from a previous case noting that \u201cpersons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.\u201d <\/p>\n

The showdown is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump\u2019s opponents to get congressionally approved funding flowing again. Another order<\/a> requiring that the disputed funds be released was issued last Monday by Judge Loren AliKhan of the District of Columbia. That case was filed by a coalition of nonprofits represented by Democracy Forward. <\/p>\n

Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward\u2019s chief executive, said that if there were to be a standoff between the executive and judicial branches, she hoped that the legislative branch would step in. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat is really a call to action for Congress,\u201d she said. \u201cThe judicial branch is not going to be able to stop this unlawful and extreme use of executive power on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlie Savage contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed research.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Trump names Richard Grenell the interim leader of the Kennedy Center as he strengthens his grip.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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President Trump wants to make himself chairman of the Kennedy Center in Washington. <\/span>Credit…<\/span>Mandel Ngan\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump announced in a post on social media Monday that he was appointing Richard Grenell as the \u201cinterim executive director\u201d of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Mr. Grenell, who was Mr. Trump\u2019s ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, is one of his most fiercely loyal apparatchiks.<\/p>\n

The president wrote that Mr. Grenell<\/a> \u201cshares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture\u201d and would be overseeing \u201cdaily operations\u201d to ensure there was no more \u201cANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The appointment was just the latest in a series of moves designed to strengthen Mr. Trump\u2019s grip on the performing arts center in Washington.<\/p>\n

He kicked off a purge Friday night, when Mr. Trump announced his intent to gut the Kennedy Center\u2019s board<\/a> and install himself as chairman. He had denounced the center\u2019s programming choices.<\/p>\n

On Monday, 18 board members and the board chairman were removed from an official roster on the center\u2019s website. The excised members were appointees of Mr. Trump\u2019s predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr. The board\u2019s chairman, David M. Rubenstein, was also removed.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rubenstein, a financier who was initially appointed to the board by former President George W. Bush, has given $111 million to the center over the years, making him the biggest donor in its history.<\/p>\n

It was not immediately clear what Mr. Grenell\u2019s placement meant for Deborah F. Rutter, the president of the Kennedy Center, who had announced last month<\/a> that she planned to step down at the end of the year.<\/p>\n

During Mr. Trump\u2019s first term he broke with precedent and declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors<\/a> after some honorees at the annual awards show criticized him. Mr. Trump is known to have had a friendly relationship with Mr. Rubenstein, and they have dined together in the past. Mr. Rubenstein declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The Kennedy Center did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the changes. According to the center\u2019s website, the board currently has 17 members, all of them appointees of Mr. Trump. No chairman is listed.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump stunned the cultural world on Friday when he announced plans to bring the Kennedy Center more firmly under his control.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social<\/a>, his social media platform.<\/p>\n

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, Mr. Trump defended his plan, saying of the center, \u201cI want to make sure it runs properly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t need woke at the Kennedy Center,\u201d he added. \u201cSome of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on. So I\u2019ll be there until such time as it gets to be running right.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center oversees the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra and also presents comedy, hip-hop, ballet and theater, staging some 2,000 performances each year. The center\u2019s budget totaled $268 million last year, including about $43 million in federal aid. The federal money is not spent on programming but on operations, maintenance and capital repair, since the center is a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump said he had not seen any shows at the center recently. \u201cThere was nothing I wanted to see,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump said in his post on social media that \u201cjust last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth \u2014 THIS WILL STOP.\u201d<\/p>\n

That appeared to be a reference to a drag-themed show the center hosted last year called \u201cDragtastic Dress-up,\u201d which was aimed at \u201cLGBTQ+ youth under 18,\u201d according to marketing materials.<\/p>\n

The members removed on Monday include some of Mr. Biden\u2019s closest aides \u2014 Karine Jean-Pierre, the former White House press secretary, and the political strategist Mike Donilon \u2014 as well as artists including the singer and songwriter Jon Batiste.<\/p>\n

Hilda L. Solis, a Los Angeles County Supervisor who has been removed from the board, said in a statement that she looked forward to \u201ccontinuing to champion the arts as a tool for equity, healing, and positive change, both locally and nationally.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Monday, the Kennedy Center removed a statement from its website that it issued on Friday in the wake of Mr. Trump\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cPer the center\u2019s governance established by Congress in 1958, the chair of the board of trustees is appointed by the center\u2019s board members,\u201d the statement had said. \u201cThere is nothing in the center\u2019s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center\u2019s board.\u201d<\/p>\n

The center has also in recent days scrubbed its site of references to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Mr. Trump has taken aim at such programs, issuing an executive order calling the initiatives \u201cillegal and immoral.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview shortly after Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration last month, Mr. Rubenstein said he did not expect the Kennedy Center to be a priority for the new administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they are focused on the Kennedy Center that much, but I hope they recognize how great it is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rubenstein expressed optimism about working with Mr. Trump, saying the two had spoken since the election, but not about the center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked to President Trump over the years about the Kennedy Center,\u201d he added. \u201cHe knows its virtues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Rubenstein said at the time that he expected the center\u2019s bipartisan tradition to continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just try to be as apolitical as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s worked out for 50 years, and I suspect it will continue.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Hamed<\/a>\"Andrew<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Homeland Security Department wants I.R.S. agents to help with immigration enforcement.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Image<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

The Internal Revenue Service. The focus on taking I.R.S. agents away from their primary responsibility could align with an effort by President Trump and Republican lawmakers to weaken the agency\u2019s enforcement.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Eric Lee\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Department of Homeland Security is asking for the Internal Revenue Service to help crack down on immigration, according to a memo viewed by The New York Times, a move that could suck resources away from the agency\u2019s tax enforcement efforts.<\/p>\n

In the memo, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to deputize I.R.S. agents to help with immigration enforcement efforts across the country. That work could include auditing employers believed to have hired unauthorized migrants and investigating human trafficking, according to the memo. Of its roughly 100,000 employees, the I.R.S. has more than 2,100 trained law enforcement officers who help investigate violations of tax law and other financial crimes.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is D.H.S.\u2019s understanding that the Department of the Treasury has qualified law enforcement personnel available to assist with immigration enforcement, especially in light of recent increases to the Internal Revenue Service\u2019s work force and budget,\u201d Ms. Noem wrote.<\/p>\n

A Treasury Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security has been pushing other law enforcement agencies\u2019 officers to also help with immigration efforts. But the focus on taking I.R.S. agents away from their primary responsibility could align with an effort by President Trump and Republican lawmakers to weaken the agency\u2019s enforcement.<\/p>\n

Much of the Republican ire is aimed at a Biden administration effort to revitalize the I.R.S. with new funding and staffing. Republicans have tried to claw back much of the new money, which was approved by Democrats in Congress in 2022. Mr. Trump has also halted the hiring of new agents and moved to install a new commissioner, Billy Long, to lead the agency. Mr. Long, a former Republican congressman from Missouri, once cosponsored a bill seeking to abolish the I.R.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Day 1 I immediately halted the hiring of any new I.R.S. agents,\u201d Mr. Trump said at a rally in Nevada soon after he took office. \u201cWe\u2019re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them or maybe we\u2019ll move them to the border. I think we\u2019re going to move them to the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elon Musk and his team have also taken an interest in the I.R.S., with Mr. Musk suggesting on social media that the agency could be deleted. Representatives from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency have sought information about the tax collector\u2019s information technology, with a goal of automating more work to replace the need for human staff members, according to people familiar with the efforts.<\/p>\n

Cutting enforcement staffing at the I.R.S. could make it easier for people to avoid paying taxes they owe to the United States government, potentially widening the deficit. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier<\/a> that D.H.S. was seeking help from Treasury Department staff members at the border.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"John<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump wants to clear bombs from Gaza, but he\u2019s sidelined the groups that would do it.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Unexploded munitions litter Gaza after months of Israeli bombardment.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Saher Alghorra for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump\u2019s proposal to take over Gaza<\/a> would have to overcome or ignore many serious obstacles, including that forcibly removing its entire population would be a violation of international law.<\/p>\n

But aside from legal challenges, there is the hard fact that unexploded munitions litter the territory after months of Israeli bombardment, posing a lethal danger to anyone in Gaza for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

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In his remarks unveiling the idea last week<\/a>, Mr. Trump suggested that he had thought about it. \u201cWe\u2019ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The president has said he might send the military to Gaza as an occupation force, but federal law prohibits U.S. troops from doing demining missions<\/a>. Instead, that work falls to the State Department, which provides funding to nongovernmental organizations<\/a> to do the job.<\/p>\n

And that is where the White House has created an unforced problem for itself.<\/p>\n

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The number of weapons Israel has used in Gaza is not publicly known, but a New York Times investigation found that Israel had used nearly 30,000 munitions in the first seven weeks of the war.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haitham Imad\/EPA, via Shutterstock<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

On Jan. 25, the State Department issued a stop-work order<\/a> to all of the nonprofit organizations it funds to find, remove and destroy unexploded munitions around the world. Many of those charities would almost certainly be called on to clear Gaza once the fighting stops.<\/p>\n

The U.N. agency responsible for monitoring global explosive contamination and funding many of those groups has asked the State Department for an exception to its 90-day hold on foreign aid<\/a> so its lifesaving work could continue. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected that request, according to a U.N. spokesman.<\/p>\n

The State Department provided no additional information on its decision.<\/p>\n

The issue came up again on Sunday, when Mr. Trump mentioned Gaza<\/a> on his way to the Super Bowl. \u201cThink of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it,\u201d he said on Air Force One.<\/p>\n

The Israeli military has used a wide array of explosive munitions in Gaza since the Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023<\/a>, which killed about 1,200 people. Israel\u2019s bombardment of the territory, mostly with U.S.-made weapons, has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians since the start of the war, according to Gaza\u2019s health ministry.<\/p>\n

The number of weapons Israel has used against Gaza is not publicly known. But a New York Times investigation in December found that Israel had launched, fired or dropped nearly 30,000 munitions into the territory in the first seven weeks<\/a> of the war, more than in the next eight months combined.<\/p>\n

\u201cMunitions like bombs, rockets or mortars have an inherent failure rate, but when used in an urban environment like Gaza, there is also potential for them to graze their targets instead of striking them squarely,\u201d the bomb-disposal expert Colin King<\/a> said in an interview. \u201cThat can damage, deflect or slow them down enough that their fuzes won\u2019t work properly upon impact, causing them to not detonate and instead become unexploded hazards in an armed and highly unpredictable condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some bomb-disposal experts have said that as much as 10 percent of the weapons Israel has used in Gaza may have failed to explode and can remain as hazardous duds for decades or even centuries until they are found and cleared.<\/p>\n

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Removing an unexploded munition from a home in Khan Younis in Gaza in 2021. The United States has spent about $5 billion on such efforts since 1993.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Locating and extracting deeply buried bombs \u2014 such as those Israel has dropped to attack Hamas tunnels \u2014 is rarely possible, according to Fenix Insight, a firm co-founded by Mr. King that provides technical support to munitions experts and deminers. Postwar reconstruction often begins with unexploded bombs remaining beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

Fenix Insight has analyzed nearly 21,000 separate incidents involving explosive weapons used by Israel and Hamas in Gaza since the war began, Mr. King said, including duds, weapons caches and places where munitions exploded.<\/p>\n

Men and women who do such work are commonly called deminers, even though they are trained to clear explosive weapons of all kinds, not just land mines.<\/p>\n

The United Nations Mine Action Service<\/a> has had deminers in Gaza since 2009 and they have remained there throughout the war. Since the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Jan. 19<\/a>, they have begun surveying the destroyed landscape for unexploded munitions as a crucial first step in their work.<\/p>\n

The United States has spent about $5 billion on demining efforts in 125 countries since those efforts began in 1993, according to a recent State Department report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That was two years before the United States normalized diplomatic relations with Vietnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Providing that funding was a sign of good will. American combat operations in Vietnam had ended 20 years earlier, but unexploded U.S. weapons scattered about the country continued to kill scores of civilians every year<\/a> after \u2014 as they did in Cambodia and Laos as well.<\/p>\n

Nearly 50 years since the fall of Saigon, American munitions still kill civilians in all three of those Southeast Asian countries<\/a>. Sometimes children find small round objects and think they are innocent playthings, when they are in fact deadly bomblets.<\/p>\n

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Unexploded U.S. weapons scattered about Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have continued to kill civilians over the past 50 years.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Linh Pham for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

From 1965 to 1973, the U.S. Air Force dropped nearly 770,000 cluster bombs during the war that released 346 million submunitions, according to military records. About 20 percent or more failed to detonate on impact for a variety of reasons, including poor quality control during production. In some cases, pilots under fire dropped them at such a high speed and low altitude that the bomblets did not arm properly before hitting the ground.<\/p>\n

In 2017, President Trump reversed a 2008 policy<\/a> that would have eliminated cluster munitions from the Pentagon\u2019s arsenal. Then in 2020, his administration made anti-personnel land mines more widely available<\/a> for U.S. forces to use in combat<\/a>, undoing roughly 25 years of U.S. policy that had limited the use of those mines<\/a> to the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

In June 2022, the Biden administration reversed<\/a> the anti-personnel mine<\/a> decision, but provided them to Ukraine<\/a> a year and a half later despite its own policy.<\/p>\n

The United States is not signatory to an international treaty prohibiting the use of cluster weapons<\/a>, just as it has never acceded to a similar treaty banning the use of anti-personnel land mines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The United States has spent about $182 million on helping Ukraine deal with dud Russian weapons<\/a> since the full-scale invasion of that country in February 2022.<\/p>\n

Much of that money passed through the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Elon Musk, empowered by Mr. Trump, has set out to destroy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Advertisement<\/p>\n

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\"Karoun<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Five former Treasury secretaries \u2014 all of whom held the role in Democratic administrations \u2014 warned<\/a> on Monday that an effort by Elon Musk\u2019s team<\/a> to access the department\u2019s sensitive payment disbursement system poses an existential threat to American democracy. \u201cWe are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy,\u201d the former secretaries wrote in an op-ed published by The New York Times.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karoun<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The former secretaries who authored the piece were Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, who served in the role under former President Bill Clinton; Timothy F. Geithner and Jacob J. Lew, who served under former President Barack Obama; and Janet L. Yellen, who served under former President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to \u201cimmediately restore frozen funding\u201d already approved by Congress to states who had sued over access to it to comply with his previous court order<\/a>. While the new order, by Judge John J. McConnell Jr., does not find the government to be in contempt of court, it marks the first time that a court has had to remind Trump\u2019s second-term Justice Department that its orders are to be obeyed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In its filings, the Justice Department claimed that<\/a> billions of dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill could legally remain frozen, a notion that Judge McConnell rejected. \u201cThese pauses in funding violate the plain text\u201d of his initial restraining order, he wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Christina<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Attorneys general from 22 states filed a lawsuit against the top United States health agency and the National Institutes of Health over a plan to cut $4 billion<\/a> in research funding that was announced late Friday. Researchers have said the cuts, which are to take effect Monday, will devastate medical research, cost thousands of jobs and put the U.S. behind other nations in medical advances.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Christina<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The cuts will cap the overhead costs that support medical studies, paying for things like utility costs and the personnel who manage animal research and research oversight. The loss of the money could leave major universities with large funding gaps. \u201cWithout relief from N.I.H.\u2018s action, these institutions\u2019 cutting edge work to cure and treat human disease will grind to a halt,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Hampton Dellinger, the former head of the Office of Special Counsel, has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration<\/a> that argues President Trump went beyond his legal authority by firing him before the end of Dellinger\u2019s five-year statutory term. The case could determine whether the president has unilateral authority to fire career civil servants under Article II of the Constitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mattathias<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Office of Special Counsel is a permanent, independent U.S. agency that is entirely separate from investigation-specific inquiries headed by Justice Department special counsels like Jack Smith and Robert Mueller.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Advertisement<\/p>\n

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\"Adam<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s actions have created a constitutional crisis, scholars say.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of President Trump\u2019s actions to reach the Supreme Court.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional crisis, but legal scholars agree about some of its characteristics. It is generally the product of presidential defiance of laws and judicial rulings. It is not binary: It is a slope, not a switch. It can be cumulative, and once one starts, it can get much worse.<\/p>\n

It can also be obvious, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,\u201d he said on Friday. \u201cThere have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We never have seen anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

He ticked off examples of what he called President Trump\u2019s lawless conduct: revoking birthright citizenship, freezing federal spending, shutting down an agency, removing leaders of other agencies, firing government employees subject to civil service protections and threatening to deport people based on their political views.<\/p>\n

That is a partial list, Professor Chemerinsky said, and it grows by the day. \u201cSystematic unconstitutional and illegal acts create a constitutional crisis,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial consideration.<\/p>\n

It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Mr. Trump\u2019s actions to reach the Supreme Court. So far he has not openly flouted lower court rulings temporarily halting some of his initiatives, and it remains to be seen whether he would defy a ruling against him by the justices.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an open question whether the administration will be as contemptuous of courts as it has been of Congress and the Constitution,\u201d said Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. \u201cAt least so far, it hasn\u2019t been.\u201d<\/p>\n

That could change. On Sunday, Vice President JD Vance struck a confrontational tone on social media<\/a>. \u201cJudges aren\u2019t allowed to control the executive\u2019s legitimate power,\u201d he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Vice President JD Vance struck a confrontational tone on social media on Sunday when he wrote, \u201cJudges aren\u2019t allowed to control the executive\u2019s legitimate power.\u201d<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Professor Shaw said a clash with the courts would only add to a crisis that is already underway. \u201cA number of the new administration\u2019s executive orders and other executive actions are in clear violation of laws enacted by Congress,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration\u2019s early moves,\u201d she added, \u201calso seem designed to demonstrate maximum contempt for core constitutional values \u2014 the separation of powers, the freedom of speech, equal justice under law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, added that a crisis need not arise from clashes between the branches of the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a constitutional crisis when the president of the United States doesn\u2019t care what the Constitution says regardless whether Congress or the courts resist a particular unconstitutional action,\u201d she said. \u201cUp until now, while presidents might engage in particular acts that were unconstitutional, I never had the sense that there was a president for whom the Constitution was essentially meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The courts, in any event, may not be inclined or equipped to push back. So much is happening, and so fast, that even eventual final rulings from the Supreme Court rejecting Mr. Trump\u2019s arguments could come too late. After the U.S. Agency for International Development or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are disassembled, say, no court decision can recreate them.<\/p>\n

In many cases, of course, the Supreme Court\u2019s six-member conservative majority may be receptive to Mr. Trump\u2019s arguments. Its decision in July<\/a> granting him substantial immunity<\/a> from prosecution embraced an expansive vision of the presidency that can only have emboldened him.<\/p>\n

Members of that majority are, for instance, likely to embrace<\/a> the president\u2019s position that he is free to fire leaders of independent agencies.<\/p>\n

The court may nonetheless issue an early, splashy ruling against Mr. Trump to send a signal about its power and independence. Striking down Mr. Trump\u2019s order directing officials to deny citizenship to the children of immigrants would seem to be a good candidate, as it is at odds with the conventional understanding of the Constitution and the court\u2019s precedents.<\/p>\n

Such a decision would have an added benefit: It would be hard to disobey. From its earliest days, the Supreme Court has been wary of issuing rulings that might be ignored.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m reminded of Marbury v. Madison<\/a>, when the government did not even bother to show up before the Supreme Court to defend its position \u2014 strongly suggesting it would flout any court order against it,\u201d said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.<\/p>\n

Even as the court ruled that the administration of Thomas Jefferson had acted unlawfully, she said, \u201cthe court carefully crafted its opinion in that case to avoid a ruling requiring executive branch compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much has changed since that 1803 decision, and the Supreme Court\u2019s stature and authority have grown. \u201cNonetheless,\u201d Professor Frost said, \u201cthe Supreme Court may find it hard to defend the laws Congress enacted against executive usurpation when the Republican-controlled Congress refuses to do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Professor Karlan said she worried that the justices would rule for Mr. Trump for fear that he would ignore decisions rejecting his positions. \u201cThe idea that courts should preserve the illusion of power by abdicating their responsibilities would just make the constitutional crisis even worse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump has already disregarded one Supreme Court decision, its ruling last month<\/a> upholding a federal law, passed by lopsided bipartisan majorities, requiring TikTok to be sold or banned. Mr. Trump instead ordered the Justice Department<\/a> not to enforce the law for 75 days, citing as authority for the move his \u201cunique constitutional responsibility for the national security of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

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President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Ark., in 1957 to enforce Brown v. Board of Education, a Supreme Court decision in 1954 that banned segregation in public schools.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Defiance of Supreme Court decisions is not unheard-of. Southern states, for instance, for years refused to follow Brown v. Board of Education<\/a>, the 1954 decision that banned segregation in public schools, engaging in what came to be known as \u201cmassive resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Brown decision is now almost universally viewed as a towering achievement. But its enforcement required President Dwight D. Eisenhower to decide to send members of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Ark., to escort Black students through an angry white mob.<\/p>\n

Not all presidents gave the court\u2019s rulings the same respect. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce a Supreme Court decision<\/a> arising from a clash between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation. A probably apocryphal but nonetheless potent comment is often attributed to Jackson about Chief Justice John Marshall: \u201cJohn Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before this weekend, Mr. Vance has said<\/a> that Mr. Trump should ignore the Supreme Court. In a 2021 interview, he said Mr. Trump should \u201cfire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state\u201d and \u201creplace them with our people.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWhen the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, \u2018The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took note of such threats in his year-end report<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery administration suffers defeats in the court system \u2014 sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,\u201d he wrote. \u201cNevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin the past few years, however,\u201d the chief justice went on, \u201celected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. warned of the dangers of ignoring courts\u2019 rulings in his year-end report.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Doug Mills\/The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

That view has many supporters, though some use caveats. \u201cIt would be an extremely grave matter for a president to defy an actual (unstayed, in-effect) order of a federal court in a case that is indisputably in the court\u2019s jurisdiction,\u201d Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator, wrote on social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But considering discrete clashes may be relying on an outdated paradigm.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne way to look at the administration\u2019s assault on legal barriers is that it is seeking to establish \u2018test cases\u2019 to litigate and win favorable Supreme Court decisions,\u201d Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith wrote in their Executive Functions<\/a> newsletter. \u201cBut the typical test case is a carefully developed, discrete challenge to statutory or judge-made law with some good faith basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Goldsmith is a law professor at Harvard and a former Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Bauer was White House counsel for President Barack Obama. They are students of Article II of the Constitution, which sets out the powers of the president.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s executive orders have some features suggesting that they mean to test legal theories in the Supreme Court, they wrote. \u201cBut in the aggregate,\u201d they added, \u201cthey seem more like pieces of a program, in the form of law defiance, for a mini-constitutional convention to \u2018amend\u2019 Article II across a broad front.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karoun<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

President Trump announced on social media this morning that he had \u201cordered the immediate dismissal\u201d of the advisory boards of the service academies for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, pledging to appoint new individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four yers,\u201d he wrote on Truth Social, adding that the the move would help \u201cmake the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karoun<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. dismissed several<\/a> Trump-appointed members of the military academy service boards during the first year of his presidency. But Trump\u2019s dismissal of the entire boards of four military services academies is far more sweeping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Karoun<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

There is a fifth service academy \u2014 for the Merchant Marine \u2014 that Trump did not mention in his post announcing the purge.<\/p>\n

The boards of the service academies are made up of members appointed by the president, vice president and congressional leaders, and include bipartisan members of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Jenna<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

A third federal judge blocks Trump\u2019s effort to end birthright citizenship.<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The injunction was announced by Judge Joseph N. Laplante at the federal courthouse in Concord, N.H.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Neville Caulfield for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A federal judge in New Hampshire issued an injunction Monday blocking President Trump\u2019s executive order on birthright citizenship, the third federal judge to do so. The executive order instructed the government to stop recognizing as citizens any children who are born on U.S. soil to undocumented immigrant parents.<\/p>\n

Judge Joseph N. Laplante of the U.S. District Court in New Hampshire said he would issue an injunction immediately, and that he would follow it on Tuesday with an explanatory order detailing his reasoning.<\/p>\n

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The executive order has already been blocked indefinitely by a federal judge in Maryland, who issued a nationwide injunction last week, and by a similar action by another federal judge in Seattle.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s crackdown on immigration \u2014 both legal and illegal \u2014 has prompted at least 10 lawsuits, seven of them challenging his executive order about birthright citizenship.<\/p>\n

The federal lawsuit filed in New Hampshire was brought by three state branches of the American Civil Liberties Union, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. Two other organizations, the Asian Law Caucus and the State Democracy Defenders Fund, helped file the suit on behalf of several groups<\/a> that assist immigrants, including New Hampshire Indonesian Community Support.<\/p>\n

Cody Wofsy, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued in court on Monday that Mr. Trump\u2019s order violated the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to virtually all persons born on U.S. soil, and that it then \u201cpiled on\u201d a violation of the separation of powers clause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey say the president needs flexibility to rewrite our citizenship rules, the DNA of this country, and that is just not the Constitution we live under,\u201d Mr. Wofsy told the judge, who was nominated by President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n

Drew Ensign, representing the government, argued that children of undocumented immigrants have a divided allegiance, and ties to \u201ca foreign power,\u201d that must be considered in deciding their citizenship status.<\/p>\n

The executive order declared that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants after Feb. 19 would not be treated as citizens. Neither, it declared, would children born to noncitizen parents who were in the United States legally but temporarily, like tourists or seasonal workers with short-term visas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Updated\u00a0 Ana Swanson Ana Swanson has written about international trade for over a decade. Trump imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum. Image A wholesale steel market in Shenyang, China, last year. U.S. metal makers have been lobbying the Trump administration for protection against foreign competition.Credit…Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images President Trump announced sweeping tariffs on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpinitiate.com\/echo-test\/demo973e36f5\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}