Trump Administration Live Updates: Schumer Backs Bill to Avert Government Shutdown
Where Things Stand
Shutdown breakthrough: Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, on Thursday broke with many in his party and said he would vote for a Republican-written stopgap spending bill to keep federal funding flowing past a midnight deadline on Friday, making a forceful case for why Democrats could not allow a shutdown that most of them have demanded. ““A shutdown would give Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE the keys to the city, state and country,” he said on the Senate floor.
Firings reversed: A federal judge ordered the federal government to rehire thousands of employees dismissed from six agencies, saying the Trump administration’s justification for firing the probationary workers had been a “sham.” Read more ›
Market turmoil: The S&P 500 index continued its slide and closed in a correction — a decline of at least 10 percent from its most recent peak. Wall Street has been grappling with Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade policies, including a fresh threat to impose a 200 percent tariff on wines and alcohol from the European Union.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, broke with his party on Thursday and said he would vote for a Republican-written bill to keep federal funding flowing past a midnight Friday deadline, making a forceful case for why Democrats could not allow a government shutdown that many of them have demanded.
Emerging on the Senate floor after a third consecutive day of internal Democratic discussions about how to proceed, Mr. Schumer said he would vote to clear the way for a final vote on the G.O.P. bill, which would fund the government largely at current levels through Sept. 30. He argued that if Democrats refused to do so, it would lead to a shutdown that would cede too much power to President Trump and Elon Musk.
“The Republican bill is a terrible option,” Mr. Schumer said. “It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
His announcement came little more than 24 hours before a shutdown deadline. If Congress fails to approve legislation extending federal funding, it will lapse at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
Mr. Schumer has long seen responsibility for government shutdowns as a political albatross, and his position was the clearest signal yet that Democrats might relent and let the measure pass on Friday despite deep reservations. All but one House Democrat voted against the plan on Tuesday, and many of them, along with their colleagues in the Senate, have spent the last few days agitating to hold firm against it in defiance of Mr. Trump.
It was unclear how many Democrats might join Mr. Schumer. Senate Republicans are expected to need the support of at least eight Democrats to steer around a filibuster. Other than Mr. Schumer, only one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, has said he would support the bill.
Many other Senate Democrats on Thursday were openly agonizing over what they described as a choice between the lesser of two evils: supporting a bill that would give the Trump administration wide latitude to continue its unilateral efforts to slash government employees and programs, or a shutdown that would also give Mr. Trump and his team broad leeway to decide what to fund.
Several Democrats — including both centrists and progressives — declared that they could not back legislation that would give that kind of power to the president and Mr. Musk. They groused that Republicans had unilaterally drafted the legislation and refused to consider any changes to win their votes, essentially daring them to take the blame for a politically toxic shutdown.
“What everyone is wrestling with is that either outcome is terrible,” said Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. “This president has put us in a position where, in either direction, lots of people’s constituents are going to get hurt and hurt badly. So people are wrestling with what is the least worst outcome.”
Panamanian officials responded to a news report that the White House had directed the U.S. military to draw up plans for sending troops to the Panama Canal with a statement in which they said that while Panama valued its partnership with the U.S. and remained committed to regional security, “our sovereignty over the Panama Canal is absolute and not the basis of any negotiation.” The report by NBC News was based on the accounts of two American officials and said that President Trump and his advisers wanted to see “a U.S. military presence in Panama and on the canal itself.”
The American officials told NBC News that the administration’s possible strategies around the Panama Canal ranged from ensuring that U.S. ships had safe passage through the waterway to restoring total American ownership of the U.S.-built canal, which has been owned and operated by Panama since 1999.
Panamanian officials continued: “Since 1999, we have successfully managed and secured this global trade route without foreign military presence. Our security strategy is built on varied cooperation, not deployment, and any move to increase foreign forces in Panama would challenge our neutrality and sovereignty.”
A federal judge declined to require a coalition of states suing the Trump administration to post a bond covering the federal government’s legal costs if the challenged failed. A week ago, the White House circulated a memo directing agencies to increasingly make that demand of parties suing the government in an attempt to stem the tide of lawsuits it is facing.
In explaining the decision, the judge cited legal precedent allowing “an exception to the bond requirement in suits to enforce important federal rights or public interests.”
Tariffs in Trump’s second term in office
As of March 12
| Status | Country | Description |
|---|---|---|
| In effect Feb. 4 | China | 10% on all imports › |
| In effect March 4 | China | Additional 10% on all imports › |
| Partial effect March 6 | Canada and Mexico | 25% on most goods that do not fall under USMCA trade pact › |
| In effect March 12 | World | 25% on aluminum and steel › |
| Planned April 2 | World | Unspecified tariff on all agricultural products |
| Planned April 2 | World | Unspecified tariff on all foreign cars › |
| Planned April 2 | World | Tariffs to match rates charged by other countries › |
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Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a progressive Arizona Democrat who was one of the first to publicly urge President Biden to end his re-election campaign last year, died from cancer, his office said in a statement. He was 77.
Mr. Grijalva had lived for a year with his illness, which caused frequent absences from the Capitol that affected the balance of power in recent months, as Republicans held a slim majority.
Mr. Grijalva, as durable as a cactus in Arizona’s political scene, represented a border district in his state — covering parts of Tucson, tribal reservations and the vast desert along the U.S.-Mexico border — for more than two decades. He was a liberal fixture of a fast-changing state powered by new arrivals, neighborhoods and businesses eating into the Sonoran desert that Mr. Grijalva, a passionate conservationist, cherished and tried to protect.
His liberal stances often put him out of step with Arizona’s Republican-heavy congressional delegation and even Democratic leaders who often tacked to the center in the bitterly contested swing state.
But his progressivism endeared him to voters in his left-leaning district and earned loyal support from tribal leaders. One of his final major legislative efforts sought to block a copper mining project at Oak Flat, a sacred area to Western Apache people.
As the son of a Mexican father who came to the United States as part of the bracero-guest-worker program, Mr. Grijalva espoused staunch support for immigrants, unions, tribal rights and environmental protections. He got his start in politics in Tucson, serving as a school board member and county supervisor before being elected to Congress in 2002.
Mr. Grijalva announced in April that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Months later, he said that he would retire at the end of his current term in January 2027.
Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona is required to call a special election for the seat within 72 hours. A special primary election must then be held between 120 and 130 days later, followed by a special general election 70 to 80 days afterward. Mr. Grijalva won re-election with 63.4 percent of the vote in 2024, and whoever wins the Democratic primary for the seat would be the favorite to replace him.
A spokesman for Ms. Hobbs said that it was too soon for any announcement on the timing of an election. Ms. Hobbs also praised Mr. Grijalva in a separate statement as a “true champion for the people of our state.”
She continued: “To his last day, he remained a servant leader who put everyday people first while in office. I join every Arizonan in mourning his passing.”
Robert Jimison contributed reporting.
Schumer’s argument for why a shutdown would give Trump more power than if Democrats approved the stopgap funding bill: “Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired. The decision on what is essential would be solely left to the executive branch.”
He added that if the government shut down, House and Senate Republicans could “pursue a strategy of bringing bills to the floor to reopen only their favorite departments and agencies, while leaving other vital services that they don’t like to languish.”
After declaring that he would vote to keep the government open, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, is to meet with reporters. What remains unclear is if sufficient Democrats will join him in advancing the Republican bill and what the timing for such a vote might be. Senators have not yet been sent home for the night.
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Kari Lake, a special adviser to Voice of America’s parent organization said that she had directed VOA, a federally funded news agency, to cancel all contracts with news wire services provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. President Trump named her as the next director for VOA, but she has not yet assumed the job, as a bipartisan board that oversees federal news agencies must confirm leadership positions, including those at VOA.
Lake has rebuffed calls from Elon Musk to abolish VOA altogether. But she has said the broadcaster’s coverage will be free from what she described as “Trump derangement syndrome,” or T.D.S. “It won’t become Trump TV,” Lake said during a speech last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference, an influential gathering of conservatives. “But it sure as hell will not be T.D.S.”
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, says on the Senate floor of the Republican funding bill, known as a C.R.: “While the C.R. bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse. The Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean C.R. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs, but I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option.”
“A shutdown would give Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE the keys to the city, state and country,” Schumer says. We reported earlier that Schumer told colleagues at the party’s private luncheon at the Capitol on Thursday that he would vote to clear the way for a final vote on the bill.
Reporting from Washington
Resignations. Retirements. Firings.
And now large-scale layoffs, as agencies faced a Thursday deadline to turn in their plans for executing the next phase of President Trump’s goal of significantly reducing the government payroll.
Agencies were given guidance and a timeline last month to submit outlines for “reductions in force” — a bureaucratic term meaning shrinking of an organization. Many agencies have not yet announced detailed plans. But some plans have trickled out, pointing to a downsizing effort exceeding the number of probationary workers already fired and the number of workers who accepted voluntary resignation offers.
There are rules governing how government agencies can make these broad cuts, however. Part of the process is assigning scores to individual employees based on their length of service, performance and veteran status. Those with the highest scores are supposed to be prioritized for finding other jobs in the agency.
Here is what we know about the reduction in force efforts at various agencies.
Education Department
More than 1,300 workers were fired this week.
This is in addition to the 572 who took resignation packages and 63 probationary workers who have been fired. The reductions have cut the size of the agency, which started the year with 4,133 workers, in half.
Last month, the agency sent an email offering employees a buyout ahead of “very significant” layoffs.
Veterans Affairs Department
The department has planned to cut 80,000 people. That number could include people who are retiring or taking a buyout, however.
In total, the department is looking to shrink its work force from 482,000 to 399,957.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The agency has planned to cut at least 1,000 people. This is in addition to 1,300 workers who have resigned or were laid off.
Together, the reductions would represent nearly 20 percent of NOAA’s approximately 13,000-member work force.
Food and Drug Administration
The agency held a meeting with employees on Thursday but did not say how many cuts they were looking to make, according to two employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Officials presented workers with a list of job categories that were eligible for voluntary separation packages. This included staff focused on laboratory safety, ethics management, records management and the Freedom of Information Act, which enables the public to access government records. Workers were told those jobs could also be targeted for layoffs.
Social Security Administration
The agency has planned cuts of about 7,000 workers, including those opting to retire or resign. The goal is to reduce the work force to 50,000, according to the agency.
NASA
The agency said it would cut jobs by closing specific offices. The Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility were targeted, as well as some other employees in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, according to a March 10 memo shared with The Times.
The agency did not provide a total number of cuts.
Defense Department
A recent memo stated that the department hopes to make reductions through voluntary early retirements and resignation incentives, like buyouts. Plans to make additional work force cuts are due to the department’s head of civilian personnel policy by March 20, the memo said.
Housing and Urban Development
The agency previously announced layoff plans for 144 employees in its Office of Field Policy and Management. It has not disclosed other details about future cuts.
Christina Jewett and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.
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Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York said she planned to meet with President Trump at the White House on Friday. The visit comes days after Thomas D. Homan, who is overseeing Trump’s deportation operation and threatened to bring more federal immigration agents to New York, visited the State Capitol in Albany and faced protests over the detention of a recent Columbia graduate. Hochul told reporters Thursday that she hadn’t paid attention to Homan and would be talking about the benefits of congestion pricing.
Reporting from Washington
A federal judge in Washington has ordered Elon Musk and operatives involved with his Department of Government Efficiency to hand over documents and answer questions about its role in directing mass firings and dismantling government programs.
The judge, Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said on Wednesday that the plaintiffs in the case — a coalition of 14 Democratic state attorneys general challenging Mr. Musk’s authority — had demonstrated a clear need to shed light on the inner workings of Mr. Musk’s team. It was the first time a judge has ordered Mr. Musk’s division be subject to discovery.
In the weeks after Mr. Musk’s team fanned out across federal agencies demanding access to federal offices and databases, lawyers seeking to stop the group’s advances have been forced to rely on news reports and anecdotal evidence about what, exactly, Mr. Musk’s team has been doing.
In many cases, federal judges have grown frustrated by the inability of the government’s own lawyers to answer straightforward questions about what data Mr. Musk’s associates have viewed, or to what extent the group had directly spearheaded recent downsizing efforts. In filings in another case, the government has also downplayed Mr. Musk’s role, claiming he was not officially the group’s leader.
The group of states had asked Judge Chutkan to grant the request to let them probe Mr. Musk’s team for information in order to confirm details about its operations and its future plans, and to “illustrate the nature and scope of the unconstitutional and unlawful authority” they said Mr. Musk has so far exercised.
Judge Chutkan agreed, writing in an opinion that “the requests seek to identify DOGE personnel and the parameters of DOGE’s and Musk’s authority — a question central to Plaintiffs’ claims.”
The order on Wednesday was more limited than the states’ slightly more ambitious request, which included a demand for two members of Mr. Musk’s team to sit for depositions — an ask Judge Chutkan denied. But the order still requires Mr. Musk and his office to provide a broad array of information about its engagement with federal agencies, employees, contracts, grants and databases within three weeks.
Judges in other cases have responded similarly to demands for more clarity about Mr. Musk’s team, which has largely been shrouded in secrecy.
On Thursday, a judge in California required an associate of Mr. Musk’s who was detailed to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm, to be deposed about any role he had in helping steer the mass firings of federal workers.
And on Monday, a judge in Washington ruled that Mr. Musk’s office was subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and ordered it to rapidly produce records that a public ethics group had sued to obtain.
Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a progressive Arizona Democrat who was one of the first to urge President Biden to end his re-election campaign last year, has died from cancer, his office said in a statement. Grijalva, 78, was first elected to Congress in 2002.
Grijalva had been absent from the Capitol in recent months as he battled cancer. Those absences — and vacancies from House Republicans stepping down to take jobs in the Trump administration — has significantly affected the balance of power in the House, in which Republicans have a very slim majority.
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Johns Hopkins University, one of the country’s leading centers of scientific research, said on Thursday that it would eliminate more than 2,000 workers in the United States and abroad because of the Trump administration’s steep cuts, primarily to international aid programs.
The layoffs, the most in the university’s history, will involve 247 domestic workers for the university, which is based in Baltimore, and an affiliated center. Another 1,975 positions will be cut in 44 countries. They affect the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit, Jhpiego.
Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $365 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In all, the university will lose $800 million in funding over several years from U.S.A.I.D., which the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling.
Johns Hopkins is one of the top university recipients of the funding that the administration is aiming to slash. And it appears to be among the most deeply affected of the major research institutions that are reeling from cuts — or the threat of cuts — to federal money that they depend on for research studies and running labs.
In a statement on Thursday calling it a “difficult day,” Johns Hopkins said it was “immensely proud” of its work on the projects, which included efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.”
In a statement last week describing Johns Hopkins’s reliance on federal funding, Ron Daniels, the university’s president said, “We are, more than any other American university, deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government.”
Of the school’s total operating revenue in 2023, $3.8 billion, or nearly half, came federally funded research. The Trump administration has said that it wants to make the government leaner and more efficient by, among other measures, dramatically cutting financial support for the program, which promotes public health and food security in low-income countries.
In ordering cutbacks in the agency, which amount to a 90 percent reduction in its operations, President Trump said that it was run by “radical left lunatics” and that is was riddled with “tremendous fraud.”
Critics of the decision, however, have said the cuts are ushering in a new era of isolationism that could prove to be dangerous. Sunil Solomon, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, said the cuts would lead to a resurgence in the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
“What true great nations do is help other nations, but now, it seems, we’re America first,” Dr. Solomon said.
The administration has also sought to reduce the amount of money that the National Institutes of Health sends to university for research, cuts that have been blocked for now in the courts. If they go into effect, those cuts would reduce federal payments to Johns Hopkins by more than $100 million a year, according to an analysis of university figures.
The university, which receives about $1 billion a year in N.I.H. funding and is currently running 600 clinical trials, is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging those cuts.
Separately, the Trump administration also has targeted specific schools for cuts. It slashed $400 million from Columbia’s budget last week based on accusations that it had failed to protect students and faculty from antisemitism.
Johns Hopkins and Columbia are on a list of 10 schools that the administration says are being scrutinized by an executive branch antisemitism task force. The administration has threatened to reduce federal funding for schools on the list, and others, that it views as being noncompliant with federal civil rights laws.
In addition to the more than 2,000 employees whose jobs have been eliminated, the university said that an additional 78 domestic employees and 29 international would be furloughed at reduced schedules.
The cuts at Johns Hopkins involve programs funded by U.S.A.I.D. through which American universities have worked with global partners, largely to advance public health and agricultural research. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that 5,200 of the agency’s 6,200 contracts had been canceled and that the remaining programs would be operated directly by the State Department, eliminating the need for U.S.A.I.D., which is under the State Department.
Research projects that are being eliminated include international work on tuberculosis, AIDS and cervical cancer, as well as programs that directly benefit residents of Baltimore.
Dr. Solomon, the epidemiologist, runs a $50 million, six-year program to improve H.I.V. outcomes in India. He said the budget cuts in his program alone would result in layoffs of about 600 people in the United States and India. The program had led to, among other things, the diagnosis of almost 20,000 people with H.I.V. through contact tracing.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Dr. Solomon said. “Stopping funding isn’t going to kill you today, but in six months you’re going to see an impact around the world.”
Dr. Judd Walson runs the department of international health at Johns Hopkins, which oversaw a five-year, $200 million program to diagnose and control tuberculosis in 20 countries funded by U.S.A.I.D.
In Kampala, Uganda, he said, the program was the only way children were diagnosed.
“That’s just one example of how the sudden withdrawal of support is having real impacts on survival,” he said.
In addition to the loss of jobs at Johns Hopkins, he said, the loss of the programs will lead to a spike in communicable diseases worldwide.
What is essentially a shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. has had significant effects at universities around the country.
An organization called USAID StopWork, which is tracking the layoffs, said that overall, 14,000 domestic workers had lost their jobs so far, with thousands more anticipated.
Research by the Federal Reserve shows that universities serve as major economic engines in many agriculture regions, from Iowa to Florida, meaning that the impact of the administration’s cuts to science research will be felt in both red states and left-leaning communities like Baltimore.
The elimination of a $500 million agriculture project called Feed the Future, which funded agriculture labs at 19 universities in 17 states, means many of those labs must shutter.
At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 30 people have lost their jobs at a Feed the Future lab that worked on improving soybean cultivation in Africa, according to Peter D. Goldsmith, a professor of agriculture who ran that laboratory.
At Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., a fisheries laboratory was shut down, according to Sidney L. Salter, a university spokesman, who did not disclose the number of jobs lost.
Economic ripple effects of the funding cuts are expected to spread through the Baltimore area. Johns Hopkins, which enrolls about 30,000 students, is also one of Maryland’s largest private employers.
An earlier version of this article misstated the amount that Johns Hopkins received in one year from the U.S. Agency for International Development. It is $365 million, not $800 million.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, one of the nation’s most prominent Democratic governors and among those seen as considering running for president in 2028, said she had a one-on-one meeting with President Trump at the White House Thursday afternoon.
“I had a productive meeting at the White House today with President Trump where we discussed bringing good paying jobs to Michigan,” Whitmer said. “We also discussed tariffs, the importance of keeping our great lakes clean and safe, and additional defense investments in the state. I’m grateful for his time today.”
Reporting from Capitol Hill
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told colleagues in their private luncheon at the Capitol on Thursday that he would vote to clear the way for a final vote on the Republican bill extending government funding, according to multiple people familiar with the comments. That is the clearest signal yet that Democrats could relent and let the bill to avert a shutdown at the end of the week pass despite deep reservations among virtually the entire conference.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTTesla, Elon Musk’s electric car company, warned the Trump administration not to impose tariffs in ways that could hurt U.S. manufacturers. The government ought to “ensure that U.S. manufacturers are not unduly burdened by trade actions that could result in the imposition of cost-prohibitive tariffs on necessary components, or other import restrictions on items essential to support U.S. manufacturing jobs,” the company said in an unsigned letter to the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, dated March 11.
Tesla joins many businesses sending letters seeking to influence the trade representative’s office, but its message carries perhaps more weight given that Musk is playing a very active role in the administration’s efforts to reshape the federal government. Tesla makes all the cars it sells in the United States at factories in California and Texas. It also has factories in Nevada and New York.
The S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent today, pushing the benchmark index into a correction — a Wall Street term for when an index falls 10 percent or more from its recent high. The index is down 10.1 percent from its mid-February peak, a drop that underscores how the two-year-long bull market is running out of steam in the early days of the Trump administration as investors are rattled by trade wars and an uncertain economic outlook.
Four fair housing organizations sued the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Government Efficiency on Thursday, faced with the sudden rescission of approximately 30 million in critical grant dollars.
The organizations — in Massachusetts, Idaho, Texas and Ohio — were among 66 housing rights nonprofits across the country that received a letter in late February informing them that key funding used to help individuals fight eviction and seek redress for discrimination had been cut off. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of a proposed class of the groups.
According to the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts district court, HUD and DOGE, operating at the direction of President Trump, made an “egregious overstep” when they canceled dozens of grants connected to the Fair Housing Initiatives Program. The program and the grants distributed to state and city organizations are used to enforce the federal Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, ethnicity, religion and other factors, like gender identity and disability.
Most fair housing complaints in the United States are handled by local housing organizations: In 2022, these groups received more than 33,000 complaints.
Local fair housing organizations generally have annual budgets of less than $1 million, and the grants account for a significant portion of their revenues. The groups say they had no warning that the funding would end abruptly. “The impact of these dollars is concrete and profound,” the complaint reads.
“It’s how they pay their bills,” said Yiyang Wu, a lawyer at the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax, which is representing the fair housing organizations. “It’s their bread and butter.”
In its letters, HUD told the organizations that each grant being canceled “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”
HUD and DOGE launched a joint task force they said would eliminate waste, fraud and abuse last month. In a news release announcing the task force on Feb. 13, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said that under his leadership, the department would be “detailed and deliberate about every dollar spent” to “better serve the American people.”
The department has made widespread slashes to initiatives that it said promoted diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “DEI is dead at HUD,” Mr. Turner has repeatedly said in recent weeks.
Since receiving notice of the funding cuts, some fair-housing groups are now leaning on their reserves to pay bills. Others are already struggling.
The San Antonio Fair Housing Council, which previously had four full-time staff, three part-time staff and three per-diem workers, was forced to lay off more than half of its work force.
The Massachusetts Fair Housing Center was forced to turn away clients, including a domestic violence survivor who was facing displacement from her temporary shelter. And the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, which serves the entire state of Idaho, has been forced to “narrow its service area, leaving 10 counties without any eviction prevention or fair housing services,” the lawsuit reads.
The grant termination, said Lila Miller, another lawyer at Relman Colfax, was illegal because the grants had been allotted by Congress. She said Congress has not authorized DOGE to direct another agency’s operations.
“Congress makes the law and Congress sets the bounds of agency action,” she said.
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Reporting from Washington
Lawyers for President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift a nationwide pause imposed on the president’s order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and foreign residents.
The move represents the first time the legal wrangling over the president’s order to end birthright citizenship has reached the Supreme Court. If the Trump administration succeeds, the policy could immediately go into effect in some parts of the country.
Three federal courts, in Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington State, had issued directives temporarily pausing the order, which was signed by Mr. Trump on his first day in office and declared that citizenship would be denied to babies who do not have at least one parent who is a U.S. citizen or legal permanent resident. That would include children born to people who crossed into the country without permission.
The Trump administration’s emergency applications are aimed at pushing back on nationwide injunctions, judicial orders that can block a policy or action from being enforced throughout the entire country, rather than just on the parties involved in the litigation. The tool has been used during Democratic and Republican administrations, and a debate over such injunctions has simmered for years.
In applications to the court, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, called the government’s request a “modest” one to limit the pause to “parties actually within the courts’ power.”
The three emergency applications list 22 states and the District of Columbia as parties to the lawsuits.
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” Ms. Harris wrote.
A series of Mr. Trump’s initial policy moves have been blocked nationally by judges who have imposed similar broad injunctions while suits challenging their legality are considered.
Legal experts say a decision by the justices to unravel nationwide injunctions could have implications for an array of legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s actions. So far, federal judges have issued nationwide injunctions blocking the firing of federal workers, the freezing of federal funding and the relocation of transgender women in federal prisons to men’s housing.
The legal system could be overwhelmed if federal judges no longer had the power to temporarily pause a policy nationwide while litigation proceeded through the lower courts, said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia who has written extensively about nationwide injunctions.
That is because people affected by the policy in states not already involved in challenging the Trump administration would likely bring individual legal challenges. Such an approach could add thousands of cases to the court system, Ms. Frost added, and not everyone affected by the policy would have the means to bring a challenge.
“You’re asking each and every one of those families to bring a suit,” Ms. Frost said. “For a year or two or three while a case is making its way to the Supreme Court, lots of individuals may suffer.”
Critics of nationwide injunctions say the broad scope of the measures has led to increased politicization of the courts because judges issue emergency rulings before the merits of cases have been heard.
“The universal relief cases are pushing the courts to act fast,” said Samuel L. Bray, a Notre Dame law professor.
Mr. Bray said the legality of nationwide injunctions has come before the Supreme Court repeatedly over the past 10 years, but the justices have not weighed in directly. He said that he viewed the birthright citizenship case as “an unusually good vehicle” for the court to decide on such injunctions.
Some of the justices have expressed skepticism on nationwide injunctions, but it is not clear whether they will take up the case as an emergency matter. Even if they reject the Trump administration’s emergency requests, the court could eventually decide to take up the dispute and weigh in on the more central question of whether birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the Constitution, once the lawsuits have made their way through appeals courts.
Birthright citizenship has long been considered a foundational principle of the United States. The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are Americans. In the landmark 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court affirmed the guarantee of automatic citizenship for nearly all children born in the country. Since then, courts have upheld that expansive interpretation.
But a small group of legal scholars, including John Eastman, a lawyer known for drafting a plan to block certification of the 2020 presidential election, has pushed for a reinterpretation of the Wong Kim Ark case. Mr. Trump and his allies argue that the 14th Amendment should never have been interpreted to give citizenship to everyone born in the country. They point to a phrase in the 14th Amendment that limits birthright citizenship to those “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
So far, that argument has not fared well in the courts. A federal judge in Seattle called Mr. Trump’s executive order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
President Trump has called the word tariff “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” He imposed hefty tariffs during his first term and promised expansive new ones as he pursued his second. On his first day back in the White House in January, he issued an executive order directing his cabinet picks to prepare even more tariffs.
In the first 50 days of his second term, those sweeping actions have upended diplomatic ties, shaken markets and confounded entire industries. But so has President Trump’s whipsawing commitment to his tariffs, which he has paused, reversed or withdrawn — at times almost as soon as they took effect.
Here’s a timeline of President Trump’s widening — and constantly shifting — tariffs, which as of Thursday included a threat to impose 200 percent levies on alcohol from the European Union.
Jan. 20 🇨🇦 🇲🇽
Hours after he was sworn in, Mr. Trump announced that he would implement additional 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico starting on Feb. 1, accusing both countries of not doing enough to stop the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States. Read more ›
Jan. 26 🇨🇴
Surprising even some of his own staff members, Mr. Trump announced on social media that he would immediately impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Colombia — and would raise them to 50 percent in one week — after its government turned back planes carrying deported immigrants. Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, briefly threatened tariffs of his own. But he quickly backed down, and soon so did Mr. Trump. That evening, the White House released a statement saying the government of Colombia had “agreed to all of President Trump’s terms” and the “tariffs and sanctions will be held in reserve.” Read more ›
Feb. 1 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇨🇳
Mr. Trump signed an executive order imposing 25 percent tariffs on nearly all goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 10 percent tariff on China. The president said the tariffs were levied in response to his concerns about fentanyl smuggling and illegal immigration. Canada and Mexico said they would retaliate with tariffs of their own. China threatened “countermeasures.” Read more ›
transcript
Trudeau Announces Retaliatory Tariffs Against the U.S.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada laid out plans to impose more than $100 billion in retaliatory tariffs against the United States, and made clear that Canada was doing so reluctantly.
I want to speak directly to Americans, our closest friends and neighbors. This is a choice that, yes, will harm Canadians, but beyond that, it will have real consequences for you. Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities. They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery stores and gas at the pump. We don’t want to be here. We didn’t ask for this. But we will not back down in standing up both for Canadians and for the incredible, successful relationship and partnership between Canada and the United States.
Feb. 2 🌎
Facing widespread criticism over his tariff threats and their possible consequences for the economy, Mr. Trump acknowledged the possible negative consequences of the tariffs on social media. “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” he said.
Feb. 3 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇪🇺
Mr. Trump agreed to a 30-day pause of his tariffs on Mexico and Canada while at the same time threatening new tariffs against the European Union. Read more ›
Feb. 4 🇨🇳
Mr. Trump’s 10 percent tariffs on Chinese imports went into effect, and China responded with a series of retaliatory steps, including additional tariffs on products from the United States. Read more ›
Feb. 7 🌎
Mr. Trump said he would broaden his trade war and introduce reciprocal tariffs on other countries but did not specify which countries would be affected. Read more ›
Feb. 10 🌎
Mr. Trump resurrected a 25 percent tariff on all foreign steel and aluminum, restarting an old fight from his first term. Read more ›
Feb. 13 🌎
Mr. Trump describes a plan for broad reciprocal tariffs on America’s trading partners, moves that would represent a dramatic overhaul of the global trading system. The goal, he said, was to force companies to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Read more ›
Feb. 14 🌎
Mr. Trump said he would proceed with a plan to impose unspecified tariffs on foreign cars on April 2. He said he had planned to announce the tariffs April 1, which is April Fools’ Day, but pushed it because he was “a little superstitious.” Read more ›
Feb. 25 🌎
An executive order directed Mr. Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to investigate whether foreign production of copper posed a risk to national security, raising the prospects of tariffs on the material. White House officials did not share how much those tariffs would be, or when the inquiry could conclude. Read more ›
Feb. 27 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇨🇳
The president said the tariffs against Canada and Mexico — and an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods — would go into effect on March 4 “as scheduled.” He said on social media that the action was necessary because “Drugs are still pouring into our Country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels,” a claim not always supported by U.S. government reports. Read more ›
March 1 🇨🇦
Mr. Trump directed Mr. Lutnick to investigate whether imports of lumber threaten American national security. The results of the inquiry could lead to more tariffs on Canada, the largest exporter of wood to the United States. Read more ›
March 4 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 🇨🇳
Tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China go into effect. The nations are the largest trading partners of the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada responded with tariffs of 25 percent on $155 billion of American goods. Read more ›
transcript
The United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend. At the same time, they’re talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Vladimir Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense. Canadians are reasonable and we are polite, but we will not back down from a fight. Not when our country and the well-being of everyone in it is at stake. At the moment, the U.S. tariffs came into effect in the early hours of this morning, and so did the Canadian response. Canada will be implementing 25 percent tariffs against $155 billion worth of American goods, starting with tariffs on $30 billion worth of goods immediately, and tariffs on the remaining $125 billion of American products in 21 days time.
March 5 🇨🇦 🇲🇽
Under fire from U.S. automakers, Mr. Trump said he would pause tariffs on cars coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico for one month. The announcement came after he hosted a call with the representatives from General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and Stellantis.
In a news conference, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said that if tariffs remained in place, the Mexican government would announce retaliatory measures on March 9.
March 6 🇨🇦 🇲🇽
Just as they were in Mr. Trump’s first term, many of the tariffs placed on Canadian and Mexican products are suspended. Mr. Trump said that his reversal on tariffs he had framed as vital to America’s security had “nothing to do with the market” after the tariff news sent shock waves through the economy. He said he would still impose 25 percent tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum on March 12, and that reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners were still on track for April 2. Read more ›
March 10 🇨🇳 🇨🇦
The Chinese government began imposing tariffs on many farm products from the United States. The tariffs included an additional 15 percent on American farm products like chicken and corn, and a 10 percent on products like soybeans and fruit.
Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, announces its own tariffs, including a 25 percent surcharge on the electricity exported to Michigan, Minnesota and New York. Read more ›
March 11 🇨🇦
Furious at what he labels an “abusive threat from Canada,” Mr. Trump threatens to double tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports in response to the electricity surcharge. Both sides backed down after several hours. Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, said he would suspend the electricity surcharge, and Mr. Trump said he would “probably” reduce the tariff on Canadian metals. Read more ›
March 12 🇨🇦 🇪🇺
The European Union and Canada announced billions of dollars in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, but European leaders said they would hold back on their tariffs until April 1 — making it clear that they would prefer not to enact them, and would like to negotiate with Mr. Trump instead. “Tariffs are taxes,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said. Read more ›
March 13 🇪🇺
Citing the European Union’s plans for 50 percent tariffs on U.S. whiskey and several other American products, set to kick in on April 1, Mr. Trump floats one of his largest tariff threats to date: a 200 percent charge on all wines, Champagnes and alcoholic products from the E.U.’s member nations. Read more ›
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTSenate Democrats are coming out of a closed-door luncheon saying they face a wrenching choice: Vote for a funding bill that gives the administration wide latitude on spending, or go into a shutdown that would also provide the budget director broad leeway to decide what to fund and not fund.
Senator Mark Kelly says his decision to oppose the stopgap bill is the most difficult call he’s had to make since arriving in Congress. “On either path, there are a lot of unknowns out there,” he said.
America's largest federal employees’ union filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the Homeland Security Department and its leadership to stop the Trump administration from canceling a collective bargaining agreement for Transportation Security Administration workers.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Seattle, is the latest example of how the union, the American Federation of Government Employees, or A.F.G.E., has taken to the courts to challenge the administration’s efforts to undermine labor protections for government workers. The union says the bargaining agreement, approved in 2024, covers 47,000 transportation security officers.
On Friday, the Homeland Security Department said it was ending the agreement, saying it had “constrained” the officers’ ability “to safeguard our transportation systems and keep Americans safe.”
The department’s statement took aim at the union, citing what it called unfair gaps in benefits programs, a culture of poor performance tolerated because of union protections; and T.S.A. employees who work full time on union matters and do not assist with screening work.
The A.F.G.E. lawsuit, which names Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, as a defendant, says rescinding the collective bargaining agreement would affect public safety, calling it “an act of retaliation by the Trump administration” against the union and an “attempt to punish free speech.”
The Democratic senators from Arizona, Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, have announced that they will oppose the House G.O.P. funding bill to avert a shutdown. Both men were seen as potential Democratic “yes” votes. In order for the stopgap legislation to pass and avoid a shutdown on Saturday morning, eight Democrats would need to overcome procedural hurdles and bring a spending measure to a final vote.
“I took an oath to protect the constitution,” Kelly said in a statement. “I cannot vote for the Republican plan to give unchecked power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. I cannot give permission for inflation-causing tariffs and firing thousands of veterans, things that are already having devastating effects on Arizonans and Americans. This might be a tough decision, but that’s what this job is about.”
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Monthly media briefings on U.S. and global climate updates, including monthly temperature and precipitation reports, have ended, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, the agency that archives climate data. The change came after the center “recently lost a significant number of staff” according to an online statement. The center is within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which recently terminated 1,300 workers and planned to lay off another 1,000, reducing staff by nearly 20 percent.
Reporting from Washington
Facing widespread layoffs from the city’s biggest employer and what amounts to a billion-dollar budget cut over the next six months, residents of the District of Columbia expressed frustration at a Capitol Hill rally on Thursday morning, declaring themselves denizens of a city under siege.
A Republican spending bill to fund the federal government through Sept. 30 would inflict major fiscal pain on the city where much of that government resides.
“This’ll just be an absolute economic disaster,” said Paul Strauss, one of the district’s nonvoting “shadow” senators, at a protest in the Senate office building attended by hundreds of defiant district residents.
The spending bill, which must pass the Senate by Friday to avoid a federal government shutdown, would essentially strip the district’s ability to spend more than $1 billion in revenue it already has on hand. That would include more than $300 million from the city’s education system, according to district officials.
“My school would probably go out of business,” said Mateo Roberts, 11.
He was one of many students in the district’s public schools, which had the day off for parent-teacher conferences, who joined their parents to protest the Republican spending plan. Senate Democrats have said they can’t support the House measure and have introduced a shorter-term spending bill that wouldn’t touch the district’s budget.
Sitting in the towering atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, the students made signs with crayons and colored markers in an attempt to appeal to senators — none of whom represent them. One read: “You cut my dad’s job and now you want to cut my school,” punctuated by four sad faces.
Many of the parents at the protest on Thursday morning have already seen their livelihoods threatened by the Trump administration’s government shake-up, which has put thousands of federal employees who live in the city out of work.
The current government spending bill could force layoffs at district schools, the Police Department and other critical city agencies, local officials say, compounding the economic troubles incited by the administration’s federal work force cuts.
Mingo Roberts, Mateo’s father, is among those who lost their jobs when Elon Musk’s effort to shrink the federal government targeted his employer, the U.S. Agency for International Development, in late January.
“It feels kind of like the city is under siege,” said Mr. Roberts, who has lived in the district for nearly 40 years.
Under federal law, Congress has to approve the district’s spending. That’s usually a routine step. But in their stopgap spending bill, House Republicans treated the city like a federal agency and forced it to keep its spending at 2024 levels, 7 percent below its budget for this year.
The move wouldn’t save the federal government any money, said Mr. Strauss. It would simply prevent the city from spending its own dollars raised from taxes, fees and “even the unpopular parking tickets that D.C. may be known for,” he said.
Around 11 a.m., a group of about 10 protesters walked into the office of Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana. A staffer asked if any Montana residents were among them, and then directed them to the hallway.
“We are residents of the District of Columbia,” said Miriam Goldstein, a parent of twin 9-year-olds. “We have no senators, so we are here to talk with you anyway.”
Her son, Solomon Wolff, flashed a handmade sign that read, “I like to play baseball,” and said the spending bill could mean cuts to youth sports. He was also worried about safety: “There will be less firefighters and police when fires start.”
His sister, Diana, pointed out that the money wouldn’t be redirected elsewhere if it wasn’t spent. “It’s from us,” she said. “They don’t have a right to take it away.”
Darren Sands contributed reporting from Washington.
President Trump told reporters that the U.S. has been discussing with Ukraine territorial concessions that it would have to make as part of a peace agreement to end the war with Russia. “We’ve been discussing with Ukraine land and pieces of land that would be kept and lost, and all of the other elements of a final agreement,” Trump said, adding: “A lot of the details of a final agreement have actually been discussed.”
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTFarmers and nonprofits have sued the Trump administration over its freeze of billions of dollars of loans and grants awarded through the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act. Like other plaintiffs who have sued the Trump administration over frozen funds, the farmers noted that they have taken out loans and hired workers and subcontractors with the expectation that the grants would be paid on time.
“All are faced with the prospect of layoffs or furloughs, abandoning projects in which they have invested significant time and money, or being responsible for costs the government promised to cover,” the lawsuit said.
transcript
Police Arrest Protesters at Mahmoud Khalil Rally Inside Trump Tower
Demonstrators packed into the lower level of Trump Tower in Manhattan on Thursday to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and permanent resident, who the Trump administration has moved to deport.
Announcement: If you resist, arrest you may be charged with additional crimes.
About 150 demonstrators affiliated with a progressive Jewish activist group packed into the lower level of Trump Tower Thursday to protest the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and former Columbia University student.
President Trump has heralded the arrest as his administration moves to deport Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States who was a prominent figure in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on Columbia’s campus.
The protesters held aloft cloth banners printed in red and black lettering. One read: “Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine.” They chanted, their words reverberating against the coral marble tiling. “Fight Nazis, not students,” they repeated.
Ninety-eight of the protesters were later arrested, according to John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of department.
Since news of Mr. Khalil’s arrest on Saturday became public, New Yorkers have taken to the streets, marching in Lower Manhattan and gathering on Columbia’s campus uptown. Free speech advocates and immigrant rights groups have questioned the legality of arresting Mr. Khalil, 30, who has a green card, was born and raised in Syria and is married to an American citizen. His lawyers are challenging his arrest in court.
Shortly before noon on Thursday, hundreds of people who had slowly been streaming into the lower level plaza of Trump Tower, Mr. Trump’s high-rise in Midtown Manhattan, took off their coats and revealed bright red T-shirts that said “Not in Our Name” on the front and “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel” on the back.
In 2015, Mr. Trump launched his first winning presidential campaign from a lectern in the very same building, after descending the golden escalator into the lobby. One of the protesters, Josh Dubnau, said the symbolism was intentional.
“He came down that escalator and immediately started demonizing immigrants,” said Mr. Dubnau, 59, a professor at Stony Brook University. “And so this is a symbolic spot where we’re here to say ‘no more.’ We won’t tolerate that.”
Building security officers turned up the music in the lobby and stopped more people from joining the group. After about 15 minutes, police officers who had been watching from afar warned that protesters who remained on the premises would be subject to arrest. Some began to slowly stream out; others stayed seated and continued to chant.
Roughly an hour after the protest started, more than two dozen officers began detaining demonstrators, zip-tying their hands behind their backs, lifting them to their feet and carrying them up the escalator.
Below, protesters continued chanting.
“We will not comply,” they said. “Mahmoud, we are by your side.”
White House officials have justified Mr. Khalil’s arrest by suggesting that by organizing protests on Columbia’s campus, he “led activities aligned to Hamas.” Officials have not accused Mr. Khalil of having any contact with Hamas, taking direction from it or providing material support to it.
His arrest marked an escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on the protests, which officials have described as antisemitic and a threat to the safety of Jewish students.
The protesters at Trump Tower, many of whom were Jewish, pushed back on that notion.
One of them, Jane Hirschmann, 78, said that she believed Jews had a particular obligation to voice their opposition to the Trump administration because it had “weaponized antisemitism.”
Ms. Hirschmann, the descendant of Holocaust survivors, said Mr. Khalil’s arrest reminded her of family stories from that “terrible time,” when her grandfather and uncle were taken away in the middle of the night.
“I know, personally from my family history, I know what fascism is, I know what genocide is, I know what abduction is,” Ms. Hirschmann said.
Moments later, she was arrested.
James Schamus, a Columbia professor who participated in the protest and is Jewish, said he thought the notion that the campus was “somehow a hotbed of antisemitic intolerance” was ridiculous.
“We all know that if anything, Columbia is a hotbed of students raising their voice and conscience, and in protest against the inhumane policies that this regime is imposing,” he said.
Plans for the event came together in 36 hours, said Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a spokeswoman for Jewish Voice for Peace.
“As Jews, we know our history,” she said. “We know what happens when authoritarian regimes start scapegoating people and start taking away rights; we know exactly where that leads.”
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