Live Updates: Trump Administration Rescinds Freeze on Federal Grants and Loans
Where Things Stand
Grant freeze: The White House rescinded an order on Wednesday that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans and sparked mass confusion across the country. A federal judge had temporarily blocked it on Tuesday. Read more ›
Laken Riley Act: This afternoon, President Trump is expected to sign his first bill into law and it closely tracks his agenda on immigration. The bill directs the authorities to detain and deport immigrants who are accused — not yet convicted — of specific crimes if they are in the country illegally. Read more ›
Confirmation hearings: Several nominees face questions from senators today: Howard Lutnick, a billionaire executive who wants to be commerce secretary; Kelly Loeffler, a top Trump donor and former senator, who is bidding to lead the Small Business Administration; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose history of questioning vaccines has raised concerns among health experts about his candidacy for health secretary. Follow live coverage of Mr. Kennedy’s hearing here ›
The White House rescinded an order on Wednesday that froze up to trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans and sparked mass confusion across the country.
The initial directive interrupted the Medicaid system that provides health care to millions of low-income Americans and sent schools, hospitals, nonprofits, research companies and law enforcement agencies scrambling to understand if they had lost their financial support from the federal government.
A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Tuesday afternoon temporarily blocked the order in response to a lawsuit filed by Democracy Forward, a liberal organization that argued that the directive violated the First Amendment and a law governing how executive orders are to be rolled out.
On Wednesday, Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director for the Office of Management and Budget, sent a notification to federal agencies notifying them that memo freezing aid had been “rescinded.”
“If you have questions about implementing the President’s executive orders, please contact your agency general counsel,” Mr. Vaeth said in the notification.
Reporting from Mexico City
President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said on Wednesday that she did not expect the United States to impose tariffs this weekend, despite the Trump administration’s affirmation a day earlier that the tariff plan was still under consideration for enforcement as of Feb. 1.
“We don’t think it’s going to happen really,” she said during her daily morning news conference. “And if it happens, we also have our plan.”
Ms. Sheinbaum declined to detail the plan, but she has previously said that her country is prepared to respond with retaliatory tariffs of its own. Through Mexico’s foreign ministry, she said officials were still in talks with the Trump administration.
Mr Trump, who has also threatened to impose tariffs on Canada, warned Mexico that he would do so on that country if it did not do enough, in his eyes, to curb illegal migration or the flow of drugs into the United States.
During the same Wednesday news conference, Ms. Sheinbaum said that 50,000 jobs were awaiting migrants who returned to Mexico — a response to Mr. Trump’s vow to carry out historic levels of mass deportations. The largest number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States are from Mexico, numbering an estimated four million as of 2022, according to the Pew Research Center.
Mexican officials have crafted a vast initiative, called Mexico Embraces You, in response to Mr. Trump’s pledge. Plans are underway to build 10 reception centers along the border — huge tents set up in parking lots, stadiums and warehouses — and to bus people to their hometowns, provide medical attention, enroll the recently returned in social welfare programs and more.
In regards to the Gulf of Mexico, for which Mr. Trump issued a new U.S. name — the Gulf of America — on his first day in office, Ms. Sheinbaum said that her government planned to send a letter to Google on Wednesday about the company’s plan to follow suit on its popular mapping service.
Google said earlier this week that it would update its labeling to “Gulf of America” for U.S. users as soon as the U.S. government updated its official maps, citing the company’s “longstanding practice” to honor government sources.
Even after the planned change, Google users in Mexico will continue to see the body of water labeled “Gulf of Mexico.” Users elsewhere in the world will see both names side by side, the company said.
Ms. Sheinbaum said that there was a difference between a continental shelf, territorial waters, exclusive economic zones and international waters. While she said she planned to make her the letter to Google on Thursday, she noted on Wednesday that it would tell the company about those differences.
“It is very important that everything is put in its proper context according to the publications,” she said. “In order to change the name of an international sea, it is not a country that changes it, it is an international organization.”
With a smile, Ms. Sheinbaum added that her government would ask Google to label North America as “Mexican America,” referencing a 1607 world map she displayed earlier in the month.
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Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, emailed the following statement after the retraction of the funding memo:
“In light of the injunction, OMB has rescinded the memo to end any confusion on federal policy created by the court ruling and the dishonest media coverage. The executive orders issued by the president on funding reviews remain in full force and effect and will be rigorously implemented by all agencies and departments. This action should effectively end the court case and allow the government to focus on enforcing the president’s orders on controlling federal spending. In the coming weeks and months, more executive action will continue to end the egregious waste of federal funding.”
The head of Democracy Forward, the legal group that persuaded a judge to temporarily stay the freeze order on Tuesday, issued a statement celebrating the order's demise. “While we hope this will enable millions of people in communities across the country to breathe a sigh of relief, we condemn the Trump-Vance administration’s harmful and callous approach of unleashing chaos and harm on the American people,” said Skye Perryman, Democracy Forward’s chief executive.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who has been a vocal critic of Trump’s decision to freeze federal funds, celebrated the news that the administration had rescinded its directive. He said Trump should next revoke the nomination of Russell Vought, his pick to lead the Office of Budget and Management, the agency that issued the original order.
“I don’t think this would have happened, except for the outcry throughout America,” Schumer told reporters in the Capitol. “We don’t believe they’ll stop,” he added. “We’re going to keep fighting.”
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, called the White House’s decision to rescind the order “an important victory for the American people,” commending those who spoke out against the original order for putting pressure on the White House. She accused the Trump administration of sowing chaos through “a combination of sheer incompetence, cruel intentions and a willful disregard of the law.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe White House had struggled to explain its thinking about the funding freeze in the face of outrage across the country throughout the day on Tuesday. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said there was confusion only among reporters, but then struggled to answer basic questions about how the funding freeze would work and who was affected.
Reporting on the Trump administration
The White House has rescinded an order that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter. A federal judge temporarily blocked the order on Tuesday.
Alan Feuer has covered Donald J. Trump’s criminal cases.
Federal prosecutors moved on Wednesday to drop their last remaining efforts to prosecute President Trump’s two co-defendants in the classified documents case brought by the former special counsel Jack Smith.
In a single-page filing, prosecutors asked a federal appeals court in Atlanta to dismiss an appeal that had been filed before Mr. Trump took office seeking to reinstate criminal charges against the two men, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira.
If the appeals court agrees to drop the government’s challenge, it would be the formal end of the case in which Mr. Trump was accused of illegally holding onto classified materials after he left office in 2021. He was also charged with conspiring with Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.
The case ended up in front of the appeals court this summer after Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump, dismissed the charges in their entirety. Her ruling determined — against decades of legal precedent — that Mr. Smith had been unlawfully appointed to his post as special counsel.
While Mr. Smith’s deputies challenged that decision, they were ultimately forced to drop the appeal where Mr. Trump was concerned after he was re-elected in November. A binding Justice Department policy prohibits pursuing criminal prosecutions of a sitting president.
But prosecutors did not immediately seek to drop their appeal regarding Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira. The case remained in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit after Mr. Trump took office and the top leadership of the Justice Department was replaced by his appointees.
In their filing on Wednesday, prosecutors gave no explanation for why they had decided now to dismiss the appeal against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira. But it was widely expected that Mr. Trump or the Justice Department would take some sort of action to have the case against the men dropped. Mr. Nauta, in particular, remains close to Mr. Trump and still serves as one of his top personal aides in the White House.
The only aspect of the classified documents case that remains unresolved at this point concerns a section of a final report that Mr. Smith wrote about the proceeding. A separate section of Mr. Smith’s report concerning the other federal case he filed against Mr. Trump — the one accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election — was released this month.
During the Biden administration, top Justice Department officials had sought to release the classified documents section of the report to Congress alone, saying it should not be made public while the case against Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira was still active.
But last week, Judge Cannon intervened and barred officials from sending that volume of the report to anyone outside the Justice Department out of concern that lawmakers might make public comments about it.
It seems unlikely that the department will now release the classified documents volume, given that both Judge Cannon and Mr. Trump’s lawyers have said it contains revelations that could be damaging not only to the president but also to some “anticipated” members of his administration.
But news organizations, including The New York Times, have filed Freedom of Information lawsuits seeking to obtain a copy of the report.
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In his confirmation hearing, Howard Lutnick had some harsh words for U.S. technology companies that are selling to China. He said the technological gains by the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek had been supported by Meta’s open platform and chips from Nvidia. “We need to stop helping them,” he said. “I’m going to be very strong on that.”
One of the major questions about Trump’s plan to slash the federal workforce and purge those he regards as disloyal is whether it will meet with resistance among members of his own party whose constituents stand to lose their jobs as a consequence. At the G.O.P. retreat at President Trump's resort in Doral, Fla., one such representative, Joe Wilson of South Carolina, praised Trump’s effort to entice government employees to resign.
“I’m excited,” said Wilson, whose district includes a sizable contingent of federal workers. “I think that’s a really positive way to address this issue. There legitimately have been people who have not returned to the office, and this is great way for them to exit.”
“In the blink of an eye, in the dark of night, Donald Trump committed one of the cruelest actions I’ve seen the federal government do in a very long time: Cutting off, shutting off billions maybe trillions of dollars for things that average American families need,” Schumer said at the news conference. “It is lawless. It is foolish.”
As they did at their news conference on Tuesday, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, gave scathing condemnations of the move to pause funds. They were joined by Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Energy Committee, and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee. Each spoke of the financial strain the freeze puts on constituents in their states, particularly middle class families and organizations that provide aid to the needy.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhile Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced questions from the Senate Finance Committee, top Senate Democrats held their second news conference in two days to denounce the Trump administration’s decision to freeze federal funding while agencies evaluate whether the money supports programs that align with the administration’s policy priorities. The back-to-back news conferences are notable, showing how determined the lawmakers are to highlight what they consider to be egregious moves by President Trump.
Clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health and at organizations it funds may continue, and patients may still travel to trial sites to participate in research, despite the Trump administration's restrictions on travel and communications, the acting director of the N.I.H., Dr. Matthew Memoli, said in an email to staff on Monday.
While Dr. Memoli’s announcement provided some clarification, it left many questions unanswered. Communications staff at the N.I.H. did not pick up the phone or respond to emails requesting additional information.
Dr. Memoli’s note emphasized that critical purchases for needed laboratory supplies and any contracting required “for anything directly related to human safety, human or animal health care, security, biosafety, biosecurity or I.T. security,” could continue.
Likewise, the email said, essential purchases and contracting needed to sustain research experiments that started before to Jan. 20 could be made “so that this work can continue, and we do not lose our investment in these studies,” Dr. Memoli said.
He described the pause imposed on mass communications and public appearances as “short” and said it did not apply to anything “directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health.”
Scientists may also continue to meet to discuss ongoing research that was initiated before Jan. 20, as long as “it does not involve public release of information or presentation of data outside of those individuals who are part of the research or facilitation/funding of that research,” the memo said.
Travel to such meetings may also continue if the meetings cannot be held remotely.
President Trump’s directive last week led to cancellations of meetings of panels that review research grant applications and make funding decisions, and halted publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report, which included items on the bird flu outbreak.
Other changes announced to federal employees last week included a hiring freeze, an end to remote work and the closing of diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs.
Dr. Memoli’s email said, however, that hiring at N.I.H. could continue if needed “for immediate human safety, human or animal health care, security, biosafety, biosecurity or I.T. security” but that exemptions must be approved by the director’s office.
The director’s memo also said that papers can be submitted to scientific journals and meetings in accordance with standard approval processes, though preprint articles “remain paused.”
The N.I.H. has a $48 billion budget, most of which is invested in medical research. While about 11 percent of the N.I.H. budget supports so-called intramural projects done by scientists in its own labs, including many based at the institute’s campus in Bethesda, Md., the vast majority of funds are awarded to what is called extramural research, awarded competitively to some 300,000 outside researchers at thousands of universities, medical schools and other institutions.
Last week’s cancellation of grant review and award meetings cast a shadow on the future of research projects, said Gary W. Miller, vice dean of research at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. The administration’s focus on rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in government may also have effects.
“Its hard for us to interpret these things,” Dr. Miller said. “We need guidance from N.I.H. to say, ‘Here’s what we mean.’ So if you have an existing project doing something in rats, where it’s unlikely there’s a D.E.I. issue, we shouldn’t be worried, if I’m correct about that.”
“But what if I’m looking at gender in rats?" he said. “We study hormones and gender in rats all the time. We have been doing that for decades, but if you’re looking at it to look at transgender issues, that might be on the chopping block. We don’t know.”
Lutnick said that he favors “across the board” tariffs to equal out America’s trading relationships. He told lawmakers he planned to “study” the CHIPS program, a $50 billion program created by Congress to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, but called it “an excellent down payment” on setting up domestic manufacturing. Trump has recently been critical of the program, calling it a waste of money.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTHoward Lutnick, Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department, is being questioned now in a nomination hearing before the Senate. Lawmakers touted his personal story, including the loss of family and employees in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He’s also being grilled about his firm’s investment in the cryptocurrency firm Tether, which, like other cryptocurrencies, has been used to finance terrorism and the drug trade.
Delivering some of his first sharp criticism of the Trump administration, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said on Tuesday that he believes President Trump’s attempt to temporarily freeze $3 trillion in federal grants and loans was just a “trial balloon” in a push to shrink the size of the federal government.
Speaking to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, Mr. Walz suggested the Trump administration’s goal was to test which programs could be cut without public outcry.
"It’s like you caught someone and they stole everything out of your house. You caught them, and you told them to put it back — and when you start looking, some of it’s still gone,” he said.
The funding freeze, which was temporarily blocked by a federal court on Tuesday, directs federal agencies to pause activities related to federal grants and loans, while they review whether the programs are aligned with President Trump’s new policies on diversity, gender, immigration and the environment.
“The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering programs is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” according to the guidelines issued by the Office of Management and Budget.
The memo exempted some popular safety net programs, including Social Security and Medicare, but caused widespread confusion about a raft of other government services.
Walz suggested that states stand to permanently lose valuable and little-noticed programs, such as meteorologists or state officials who monitor dangerous chemicals in the water. He called on Republican governors to speak out against the chaos — “shame on you,” he said — and warned their states could pay a far greater price.
Later today, President Trump is scheduled to sign the Laken Riley Act, which directs the authorities to detain and deport immigrants who are accused — not yet convicted — of specific crimes, if they are in the country illegally.
The crimes include burglary, larceny, theft, shoplifting, assaulting a police officer and any crime that results in death or bodily injury. The bill requires that people who are arrested or charged with such a crime, or who admit to committing one, be detained without requiring that they first be convicted.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Pam Bondi for attorney general in a party-line vote — but not before Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat, accused her of failing to commit to upholding the rule of law if it meant breaking with President Trump.
Questions about Bondi’s independence and willingness to resist Trump are following her even as she heads to likely confirmation. In the two weeks since her hearings, the White House has directed interim Justice Department officials to fire or transfer officials targeted by Trump’s team. And Bondi was not included in the decision-making process that led to Trump’s pick of Kash Patel for F.B.I. director, according to people familiar with the situation.
Another sign Bondi might not be in the Trump decision-making loop: At her hearings, she suggested Trump would not issue pardons to violent January 6 rioters, saying: “The president does not like people who abuse police officers.” Days later, Trump pardoned all of those convicted, including people who had attacked police officers.
Howard Lutnick, a wealthy donor to President Trump who has been picked to lead the Commerce Department, defended Mr. Trump’s plans to impose broad tariffs and said he would take a tough stance on technology sales to China during his Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
If confirmed, Mr. Lutnick would lead on trade policy and oversee a broad portfolio of government programs touching on business promotion, technology and science. He told lawmakers that he favored “across the board” tariffs to equal out America’s trading relationships. He insisted that tariffs would not be inflationary, in contrast to forecasts by many economists.
Mr. Lutnick said that American farmers, ranchers and fishers were being “treated with disrespect around the world.”
“We need that disrespect to end. And I think tariffs are a way to create reciprocity, to be treated fairly, to be treated appropriately, and I think it will help our farmers, our ranchers and our fishermen to flourish,” he said.
Asked about China’s recent advances in artificial intelligence, Mr. Lutnick said he would take a tough stance on the department’s oversight of technology sales to China. He said that the recent A.I. technology released by Chinese firm DeepSeek had been underpinned by Meta’s open platform and chips sold by the U.S. firm Nvidia.
“We need to stop helping them,” he said. “I’m going to be very strong on that.”
Mr. Lutnick also told lawmakers that he planned to “study” a $50 billion program created by Congress to bolster U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, but that he would get the money out the door “appropriately” and “correctly.” Mr. Trump has recently described the program, known as the CHIPS Act, as a waste of money.
“We need domestic manufacturing,” Mr. Lutnick said. “The CHIPS Act was an excellent down payment to begin that process.”
Mr. Lutnick will play a key role in overseeing the CHIPS office, which was created in 2022 to help bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States from Asia.
Mr. Trump has recently been critical of the program — even though the program had its origins with the Trump administration, when Trump officials held out the promise of subsidies to bring Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to the United States. T.S.M.C. has located its first U.S. hub in Phoenix and was promised $6.6 billion in grants by the Biden administration.
Speaking to Republican lawmakers on Monday evening, Mr. Trump criticized the Biden administration’s investments in the chip industry, saying that semiconductor manufacturers had “left us and went to Taiwan.”
“We want them come back, and we don’t want to give them billions of dollars like this ridiculous program Biden has. They already have billions. They have nothing but money,” the president said.
As the head of the Commerce Department, Mr. Lutnick would be in charge of many other government functions that have enormous sway over the business and technology sectors. The Commerce Department is in charge of promoting business interests abroad, restricting exports by tech companies to protect national security and delivering government subsidies to the semiconductor and broadband industries, among other functions.
The agency has 51,000 workers and an $11 billion budget. It also oversees the counting of the U.S. population during the census, the regulation of America’s fisheries, patents, weather forecasting and the development of global technological standards.
Mr. Trump has also said that Mr. Lutnick would lead the administration’s trade policy more broadly, including overseeing the United States Trade Representative, a small agency that negotiates trade deals and levies certain tariffs. U.S.T.R. technically reports directly to the president, as well as to Congress.
Mr. Lutnick is the chief executive and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street brokerage, and holds leadership positions at BGC, another brokerage; and Newmark Group, a commercial real estate firm. Mr. Lutnick has promised to resign the positions if nominated.
Through Cantor and his other firms, Mr. Lutnick has acquired holdings and executive positions in a stunning array of companies. Financial disclosures filed by Mr. Lutnick last week showed that he has or previously had executive positions in more than 800 companies, and had at least $800 million in assets.
Democratic lawmakers questioned Mr. Lutnick about these financial ties, including Cantor Fitzgerald’s investments in a cryptocurrency company called Tether. And in a letter addressed to Mr. Lutnick on Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, called Tether “a known facilitator of criminal activity that has been described as ‘outlaws’ favorite cryptocurrency,’” saying that the tool had financed Mexican drug cartels, terrorist groups and the North Korean nuclear weapons program.
The connections with Tether “raise significant questions about your own personal judgment and the conflicts of interest that you will have if you are confirmed as Commerce secretary,” Ms. Warren wrote to Mr. Lutnick.
At his hearing, Mr. Lutnick denied any wrongdoing on the part of Cantor or Tether, saying it was like “blaming Apple because criminals use Apple phones.”
“It’s just a product,” he said. “We don’t pick on the U.S. Treasury because criminals use dollars.”
For President Trump and his supporters, Mr. Lutnick’s wealth and business success are a strong qualification for the role of Commerce secretary. But Democrats view Mr. Lutnick’s financial ties with more skepticism, saying they could raise questions about his ability to put the interests of the American people ahead of those of himself and former business partners.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that Mr. Lutnick also has financial interests in the mining industry in Greenland, through Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor has invested in a company called Critical Metals Corp, which has proposed mining metals and minerals in Greenland as soon as 2026.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly proposed purchasing Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Demark. The governments of both Denmark and Greenland say the territory is not for sale.
Lawmakers and with Vice President JD Vance — who made a brief appearance at the hearing — touted Mr. Lutnick’s personal story, describing him as someone who had achieved great success despite facing adversity.
Mr. Lutnick, a Long Island native, lost both his parents by the time he was 18, and became chairman of Cantor at just 35. He lost his brother and most of Cantor Fitzgerald’s employees in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. A longtime donor to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lutnick more recently became a key economic adviser and helped to lead his transition team.
Mr. Lutnick has argued in favor of Mr. Trump’s economic vision, saying that lower corporate taxes, more oil production and tariffs will help to supercharge the U.S. economy. Mr. Lutnick is also a part of Mr. Trump’s efforts to eliminate parts of the federal government, and has described himself as the founding force behind the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The Trump administration has offered roughly two million government employees the option to resign and continue being paid for several months, a move that could significantly reduce the size of the federal work force.
The plan immediately drew criticism from Democrats and unions representing federal workers, who said such a vast reduction could create chaos for Americans who rely on government services. The offer was also met with skepticism by many federal workers.
Here is a look at the plan and its possible implications:
What is the plan?
An email sent to employees on Tuesday by the Office of Personnel Management, an agency that oversees the federal civilian work force, was titled “Fork in the Road.” It laid out a program for deferred resignations, under which employees of federal agencies are given the option to resign and continue being paid until Sept. 30.
The email said that the last date to accept the offer is Feb. 6, and that employees could do so simply by sending an email from their government account with the word “resign” in the subject line.
How will this work?
Employees who accept the offer will “promptly have their duties reassigned or eliminated,” according to a guidance memo from the Office of Personnel Management. They will then be placed on paid administrative leave until the end of September, or sooner if they have chosen an earlier resignation date. Workers will continue to be paid on their regular schedule — they will not receive a lump-sum payment after resigning, according to the agency.
Employees who resign will not be expected to work, except in cases described as “rare” and determined by agencies, according to a question-and-answer page on O.P.M.’s website. The memo included language that gives agency leaders some room to require people to continue working. Agency leaders can deem it necessary for some workers to “be actively engaged in transitioning job duties,” according to the memo. Employees are expected to be placed on leave once that work is done.
The message sent to federal workers closely resembled an email that the billionaire Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees after buying the social media platform in late 2022. Mr. Musk’s email shared the same subject line and offered employees severance packages.
Mr. Musk has been leading the cost-cutting effort that Mr. Trump named the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been tasked with shrinking the federal government. In a post on X, Mr. Musk’s social media platform, the billionaire said on Wednesday that employees who take the offer can do “whatever you like, including obtaining a new job.”
Why is the Trump administration doing this?
Slashing the size of the federal government is a priority for Mr. Trump, as it has been for many Republican presidents. After winning the November election, he said that a smaller and more efficient government, with less bureaucracy, would be a “perfect gift to America” for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. Mr. Musk shared a post on X claiming that 5 percent to 10 percent of the federal work force was expected to quit, saving the government $100 billion. The federal government spent $6.75 trillion in fiscal year 2024.
Mr. Trump has also described the federal work force as part of a “deep state” that attempted to thwart his priorities during his first term in office, and maintains that dramatic action is necessary to combat this group’s power.
Critics say Mr. Trump’s efforts risk gutting federal agencies whose nonpartisan work offers far-reaching legal, economic and social benefits for Americans.
The plan is part of a raft of changes that Mr. Trump envisions for the federal civil service, some of which were detailed in the email sent by the O.P.M. They include ending remote work and changes to performance standards to ensure that all employees are “reliable, loyal, trustworthy.” The email also said that a substantial number of workers could be furloughed or reclassified to “at-will status,” in effect making them easier to fire.
Who is eligible?
The Office of Personnel Management said that all federal civilian workers were eligible, with the exception of military personnel, postal workers and certain employees involved with immigration enforcement or national security. Individual agencies could also choose to exclude specific staff members or positions from the offer, it said.
What happens to those who don’t take the offer?
The agency said that the deferred resignation offer was “completely voluntary,” and that employees who did not respond to the email would retain their jobs.
But it warned those who choose to remain in their positions that retaining their jobs was not guaranteed.
“At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions,” the email said.
The email also said that the majority of federal agencies would likely be downsized and physical offices would be consolidated, meaning that some workers would be relocated.
Is the offer legal?
Much about the plan remained unclear, including whether the administration can legally offer such a sweeping buyout package without budget authorization from Congress. On the Senate floor on Tuesday night, Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, urged federal workers not to resign and warned that the administration was not legally bound to pay them after they stopped working.
“The president has no authority to make that offer” Mr. Kaine said. “There’s no budget line item to pay people who are not showing up for work. If you accept that offer and resign, he’ll stiff you.”
The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal workers and is the largest union of federal employees, condemned the offer, which its president, Everett Kelley, said would “cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”
The White House is already facing mounting legal challenges to the flood of executive orders Mr. Trump has issued in the nine days since he was inaugurated. On Tuesday, a federal judge halted a Trump administration order to pause billions of dollars in federal grant and loan programs. A week ago, another judge temporarily blocked Mr. Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.
Madeleine Ngo contributed reporting.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTPresident Trump issued a flurry of executive orders and presidential proclamations in his first week in office, touching on many aspects of American life, including immigration, trade, diversity efforts and foreign aid.
Here’s what a group of people we will be regularly checking in with over the first 100 days thought.
‘He’s making a lot more bold decisions.’
Dave Abdallah, 59, from Dearborn Heights, Mich.
Dave Abdallah, a Detroit-area real estate agent who has been keeping an open mind about Mr. Trump, doesn’t see much to quibble with after the first furiously busy week of his second presidency.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said, “I’m finding him a little bit more palatable this go-round.”
To Mr. Abdallah, the president’s unapologetic style has been impressive enough to overshadow any specific policy concerns.
Mr. Trump seems to know “how to navigate through the system much better than he did before,” Mr. Abdallah said, adding that “he’s making a lot more bold decisions, and I think sometimes in leadership, you’ve got to make bold decisions.”
Mr. Abdallah, a Muslim man who immigrated to the United States as a child, was unhappy with United States’ backing of the war in Gaza and voted for Jill Stein.
Mr. Abdallah didn’t like the move to pardon Jan 6. rioters. He made note of the significant concern in Detroit about immigration raids, and said Mr. Trump was too focused on illegal immigration this soon in his term.
Mr. Trump probably overdid it, Mr. Abdallah said, by signing so many executive orders on his first day of office. “I felt like that was a little excessive,” he said. “I also think it may be setting precedent for how he’s gonna be a take-charge type of guy.”
“I may not agree with everything” Mr. Trump has done so far, Mr. Abdallah said, “but I like the direction he’s taking the United States. I like the fact that America, in his mind, is first.”
— Kurt Streeter
‘I think we’re in for a rough, rocky road till we get there.’
Darlene Alfieri, 55, from Erie, Pa.
Since Sunday afternoon, when Mr. Trump threatened Colombia with steep tariffs if it did not allow military planes carrying deported migrants to land, Darlene Alfieri has been busy with spreadsheets.
Her floral shop business would have taken a big hit with the tariffs, she said — Colombia is one of the main sources of roses in the United States. The threat was dropped when the countries came to an agreement that evening. Nonetheless, Ms. Alfieri has been figuring out how to price in the uncertainty ahead of Valentine’s Day.
The whole episode left her frustrated. She believes reaction from some others in her industry and in the news media was unnecessarily hysterical, since nothing ultimately happened. But it also reinforced concerns she already had about the new administration.
“I don’t think you’re fully thinking about how that affects the American people in their everyday lives,” she said. “Because now I’m not making flowers today, I’m figuring out what I’m gonna do if he goes through with any of this.”
She is convinced that immigration needs to be lawful and orderly, and she saw the reasoning behind many of the administration’s actions last week, including the hard-line approach to Colombia. But her initial worries — about the havoc Mr. Trump might wreak in pursuit of these aims — were hardly put to rest.
“When it all settles down and we all adjust to the changes that it may make in our lives, I think we’ll be OK,” she said, adding, “I think we’re in for a rough, rocky road till we get there.”
— Campbell Robertson
‘I just hope that the overall good for society is better than the negative.’
Perry Hunter, 55, from Sellersburg, Ind.
Perry Hunter, a high school social studies teacher, has spoken to his students about the many changes President Trump is making to the United States, and one change he appreciated was the return of the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy. An initiative that began in Mr. Trump’s first administration, it requires certain asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while an American immigration judge considers their case.
“I think as people start to pile up at the Mexican border, it will force Mexico to help us with this,” Mr. Hunter said. “And, you know, we can’t do all this on our own.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the policy left some migrants in squalid, dangerous conditions at the border, a consequence that very much bothered Mr. Hunter. He said, however, that Mr. Trump’s decision to restart the policy was necessary to “straighten out” the flow of immigrants into the United States because it has led to a strain on the economy. “Sometimes you need tough people to make tough decisions,” he said.
He is closely watching how the president follows through with his promise to deport many undocumented immigrants. And he is bracing himself, concerned that the administration is putting too much pressure on immigration enforcement agents to round up large numbers of people. He’s worried that the United States would deport people who are “easy pickings” — including, to his dismay, children — instead of focusing on immigrants with criminal backgrounds who might be harder to find.
“Unfortunately, a lot of good people are probably going to be hurt,” Mr. Hunter said. “I just hope that the overall good for society is better than the negative.”
— Juliet Macur
‘I feel like there are more important topics to tackle in the United States than what the workplace looks like.’
Isaiah Thompson, 22, from Washington, D.C.
Isaiah Thompson, a student at Howard University, said he almost couldn’t keep up with the blitz of executive actions signed by President Trump. But he watched closely for news about some of the issues he personally cares about, including climate change and racial equity.
After Mr. Trump ordered federal agencies to get rid of programs and policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion, Mr. Thompson said he read the details and wondered, “why do the ideals of diversity and equity and inclusion make people so mad? I feel like there are more important topics to tackle in the United States than what the workplace looks like,” he said.
“I am hoping that Donald Trump’s team is guiding him to make the right decisions for America as a whole, meaning everybody is included,” he added.
He said he was also bothered by the order to pull the United States from the Paris climate agreement. The extreme weather events in January alone — the fires in the Los Angeles area and the snow in the South — reinforced to Mr. Thompson the necessity of strong climate change policies.
But Mr. Thompson did find a bright spot. He said he agreed with Mr. Trump’s call for the release of all government records related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
— Audra D. S. Burch
Theodore Schleifer and Madeleine Ngo
Theodore Schleifer covers Elon Musk’s political work, and Madeleine Ngo covers economic policy.
On Friday afternoon, the world’s richest person showed up at what sounds like one of the world’s most boring agencies to demand a list.
Elon Musk had arrived at the Office of Personnel Management, a mundane-sounding agency with vast power overseeing the federal civilian work force. During President Trump’s first term, the nation’s leader used the agency to enforce loyalty to his agenda. During his second term, it appears Mr. Musk may try to use the office to enforce loyalty to his own agenda.
Mr. Musk has stormed into Washington with a host of friends and paid employees, determined to leave his imprint quickly. Never before in modern times has someone so rich played such a hands-on role in American government, with Mr. Musk making himself omnipresent in Washington since flying there for Mr. Trump’s inauguration. His plane has not left.
On Mr. Trump’s first day, he empowered Mr. Musk by establishing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting effort that the tech billionaire is leading. Mr. Trump gave the group the authority to work on a plan to reduce the size of the federal work force, among other things.
Taking to Washington with his trademark single-mindedness and bravado, Mr. Musk is reprising the tactics he deployed at Twitter, which he bought in 2022. He has brought to bear the full weight of his Silicon Valley network, installing some of the same executives who cut 80 percent of the social network’s staff, and even using the same email subject lines. He has promised “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy,” and is now racing to do just that.
Mr. Musk’s slash-first, fix-later approach to cost-cutting has been intentional throughout his career. And some of the early moves by the Trump administration to freeze funding for federal programs and entice federal workers to resign have led to mass confusion or are being legally challenged. (On Wednesday, the White House walked back an order that froze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans.)
But Mr. Musk wants to see radical change — and he is pressing forward.
This article is based on interviews with a dozen people briefed on how Mr. Musk has spent his first week in Washington, all of whom insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about his activities.
Musk allies to oversee the work force
On Friday, Mr. Musk showed up at the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building and asked Office of Personnel Management staff to produce a list of the federal chief information officers. The request reflected how Mr. Musk’s plans seem to heavily involve the agency, which is set to be run by a supporter of his, Scott Kupor, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz who is awaiting Senate confirmation.
Mr. Musk, however, is wasting no time before Mr. Kupor’s arrival.
Several of Mr. Musk’s top aides have landed senior adviser roles at the Office of Personnel Management. They include Brian Bjelde, a human resources executive at SpaceX who has identified himself as the company’s 14th employee and who played a role in Mr. Musk’s takeover of Twitter, where he helped carry out widespread layoffs. Another arrival is Riccardo Biasini, an executive at the Boring Company, Mr. Musk’s tunneling company, who also joined Mr. Musk’s team at Twitter.
But the most empowered of Mr. Musk’s allies at the Office of Personnel Management has been Anthony Armstrong, a top technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on the billionaire’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022.
Mr. Musk appears to have even taken over internal communications. On Tuesday evening, an email from the Office of Personnel Management offered about two million federal employees the option to resign, and to be paid through the end of September, with the subject line: “Fork in the road.” That was exactly the subject line that Mr. Musk used to encourage Twitter employees to resign in November 2022.
Most of the people whom Mr. Musk has brought to Washington are young engineers who did not know him but have signed up for 80-hour workweeks and are being deployed at federal agencies.
But he does not readily trust new people, and so he is calling largely on his inner circle.
Confidants in his vast war on the bureaucracy include the investor Antonio Gracias, a former board member of Tesla, and Terrence O’Shaughnessy, a retired four-star Air Force general who is one of Mr. Musk’s top advisers at SpaceX. Mr. Musk has pushed Mr. O’Shaughnessy for administration positions, and the general told others he was being considered as a possible replacement for Pete Hegseth during Mr. Hegseth’s turbulent but successful bid to lead the Pentagon.
One new person to have gained Mr. Musk’s trust is Baris Akis, a Turkish-born leader of a Silicon Valley venture firm who graduated from Stanford in 2016.
Mr. Akis had no meaningful relationship with Mr. Musk until just a few weeks ago. But he was deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s transition — perhaps putting in more hours than any other tech leader beyond Mr. Musk — and he has emerged from that effort as a right-hand man to Steve Davis, a Musk lieutenant who has overseen the Department of Government Efficiency.
Mr. Davis and Mr. Akis have been heavily involved in the Office of Personnel Management in recent weeks. But neither of them actually work there. Mr. Davis nowadays spends much of his time detailed to the General Services Administration, which helps manage federal agencies and which is a likely next target of Mr. Musk’s war on the bureaucracy.
At the General Services Administration, Mr. Musk has installed a Tesla software engineer, Thomas Shedd, as its director of “Technology Transformation Services.”
Another Musk ally, Amanda Scales, who previously worked for the billionaire and before that for Mr. Akis, has played a particularly outward-facing role at the Office of Personnel Management. Federal agencies were asked to send Ms. Scales a list of the workers who are still on probationary status — and are therefore easier to fire.
Ms. Scales has been appointed as the agency’s chief of staff at a time when it has no full-time director, and she has faced much anger online as the face of Mr. Trump’s proposed reductions to the federal work force.
Fingerprints on key moves
In Washington, Mr. Musk is both a celebrity and a bureaucrat, sometimes simultaneously.
At one moment, he and several of his billionaire friends, including Mr. Gracias, were mingling with fixtures of the Washington establishment at the annual dinner of the Alfalfa Club, where several attendees broke the event’s unwritten no-phones policy and mobbed him for selfies. At another, he was spotted in the White House mess, where 20-something staff members grab sandwiches between meetings — but unlike Mr. Musk, most do not return to a West Wing office to help oversee what Mr. Trump says is a 40-person team carrying out his executive orders.
Mr. Musk has found himself focused on bureaucratic maneuvers in his first week.
His team has prioritized finding a way to email all 2.3 million federal civilian employees at once, the type of thing that is easy to do at a company like Tesla but more challenging to do across the vast federal work force, in which agencies can typically email only their own employees. The Office of Personnel Management was able to use that list to deliver its Tuesday evening memo.
All of this is in pursuit of what Mr. Musk initially said would be $2 trillion in annual cost savings through the use of technology, deregulation and budget cuts (he has more recently lowered his estimate to closer to $1 trillion). In several posts on X since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Government Efficiency has boasted of more than $500 million in immediate savings through the curtailing of D.E.I. initiatives and the renegotiation of unused office leases, which officials called the “initial focus” of the group.
On the first day of the Trump administration, Mr. Musk’s team took over the United States Digital Service, a unit in the president’s executive office that has been renamed the “U.S. DOGE Service.” The service’s roughly 200 employees are expecting substantial layoffs, and a different Silicon Valley executive, Tom Krause, has conducted some interviews of employees. Among other questions, Mr. Krause has asked the employees what makes them exceptional and who the agency’s best workers are.
Mr. Musk’s team has also taken on a range of roles, including I.T. staff members and detectives. Mr. Trump has said that Mr. Musk’s job includes carrying out his executive orders. And so Mr. Musk has tried to deploy his engineers to find ways to turn off the flow of money from the Treasury Department to things that Mr. Trump wants to defund.
Mr. Musk’s allies in the Department of Government Efficiency and the White House say they snuffed out an attempt from some federal employees to rush money out to the World Health Organization just after Mr. Trump said he was withdrawing the country from the global agency. Their claims could not immediately be verified.
And according to at least one Trump aide, Mr. Musk also played a role in the president’s sweeping grant of clemency to the people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
On the evening of the prisoners’ release, Paul Ingrassia, a White House liaison to the Justice Department, claimed to a crowd at a Washington jail that “Elon Musk knew a lot about this and was the mastermind behind it.”
Next to Mr. Ingrassia was an aide to Mr. Musk: Christopher Stanley, who has worked as a security engineer at SpaceX and X and recently relocated to a role “at the White House,” Mr. Ingrassia said. Mr. Stanley has complained on social media about federal employees’ work ethic and speed at returning emails since he arrived in Washington.
Mr. Musk may be something of a super-aide, but he is generally liked by Mr. Trump’s inner circle, texting memes and trading intel with staff members who are worth a minuscule fraction of what he is. He does not find it beneath him: In a conversation with a friend, Mr. Musk seemed almost amazed at his fortune.
Kirsten Grind and Ryan Mac contributed reporting.
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The newly confirmed transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, signed an order on Tuesday seeking to roll back key fuel economy standards set by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The order is the latest effort by the Trump administration to roll back initiatives introduced by the Biden administration aimed at promoting electric vehicles and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In a memo to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Mr. Duffy instructed the agency to re-evaluate fuel economy rules for new cars and trucks through the end of the decade. The order came as one of Mr. Duffy’s first acts as the head of the Department of Transportation.
The Biden fuel economy standards require American automakers’ passenger cars to average 65 miles per gallon by 2031, up from 48.7 miles last year. The average mileage for light trucks, including pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles, would have to reach 45 miles per gallon, up from 35.1 miles per gallon.
Some automakers have criticized the rule as a costly distortion of the market.
“Artificially high fuel economy standards,” the transportation secretary’s memo said, “impose large costs that render many new vehicle models unaffordable for the average American family and small business owner.”
Mr. Duffy, a former Wisconsin representative, was confirmed earlier in the day despite a late wave of opposition from some Democrats upset about the Trump administration’s freeze on federal grants and loans. The final vote was 77 to 22.
In his memo, Mr. Duffy expressed doubts about whether the current fuel economy standards accurately reflect the United States’ abundant oil reserves and refining capabilities. The memo states that these standards may not take into account the vulnerabilities of the U.S. electricity grid or the national security risks of relying on foreign sources for materials, particularly those used in electric vehicle batteries.
Mr. Duffy’s memo directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to review all fuel economy standards for vehicles from the 2022 model year onward.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has told Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that he is removing his security detail, revoking his security clearance, and ordering an inspector general inquiry into his record, the Pentagon said late Tuesday.
Mr. Hegseth’s spokesman, John Ullyot, said in a statement that the secretary directed the investigation to determine whether “it is appropriate” to review the rank upon retirement for General Milley, who stood up to President Trump in his first term. Essentially, Mr. Hegseth is asking whether General Milley should be demoted.
“We have received the request and we are reviewing it,” Mollie Halpern, a spokeswoman for the acting Defense Department inspector general, said of the referral to examine General Milley’s actions as chairman.
The general retired in 2023, and at a ceremony marking the occasion he reminded troops that they took an oath to the Constitution and not to a “a king, or a queen, or to a tyrant or dictator, and we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.” Senior Pentagon officials late Tuesday sought to cast Mr. Milley as an insubordinate political operator while in the chairman’s job.
“Undermining the chain of command is corrosive to our national security, and restoring accountability is a priority for the Defense Department under President Trump’s leadership,” Joe Kasper, Mr. Hegseth’s chief of staff, said in a statement late Tuesday.
General Milley could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Just days before General Milley’s retirement ceremony, Mr. Trump, then still planning a political comeback, suggested that the general had committed treason and should be put to death.
Amid continued threats from Mr. Trump of retribution against his enemies upon returning to office, General Milley received a pre-emptive pardon from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. hours before he left office last week. (In his first week back in the White House, Mr. Trump had the general’s portrait removed from the hallway in the Pentagon outside the chairman’s offices.)
Since General Milley has been pardoned, he cannot be court-martialed. But a finding against him could lead to a decision to reduce his rank, even in retirement.
General Milley and other former Trump administration officials had been assigned government security details because they remained under threat following the U.S. drone strike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassim Suleimani in early 2020.
Two Republican Senate allies of President Trump urged him on Sunday to rethink his decision to strip security details from the former advisers who have been targeted by Iran, saying the move could chill his current aides from doing their jobs effectively.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, spoke after Mr. Trump abruptly halted government security protection for three officials from his first term who were involved in his Iran policy and have remained under threat.
Fox News earlier reported that Mr. Hegseth was moving to revoke General Milley’s security detail and order the inspector general review.
As the newly sworn-in defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth has been a sharp critic of General Milley.
General Milley’s split with Mr. Trump had its roots in his decision to apologize also for inserting himself into politics when he walked alongside Mr. Trump in 2020, through Lafayette Square, for a photo op after the authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear the area of peaceful protesters. “I should not have been there,” he said later. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Mr. Trump’s supporters have also attacked General Milley over his contacts with his Chinese counterpart during the first Trump administration, assuring them that the United States was not seeking to strike them, or trigger a military crisis.
General Milley, 66, was promoted to chairman of the Joint Chiefs by Mr. Trump in 2019. At the time, the president was impressed with his military record and his bearing. But he quickly soured on him. A book published by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, “I Alone Can Fix It,” reported that General Milley was worried that President Trump might attempt to stage a coup after he lost the 2020 election. He made efforts to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, and issued a statement condemning the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.
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