Appointments and Executive Changes

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      Judge Refuses to Immediately Reinstate Inspectors General Fired by Trump

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      A federal judge denied eight former inspector generals who were fired by President Trump immediate reinstatement to their jobs on Friday and excoriated their lawyers, saying that their emergency request had wasted the court’s limited time.The ruling by Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington marked a rare victory for the Trump administration in the barrage of lawsuits that has followed its attempts to slash the federal work force, freeze funding, dismantle agencies and install officials loyal to the president. But it is not necessarily permanent: Judge Reyes criticized the case more on procedural than substantive grounds and allowed it to proceed on a less urgent schedule.Still, in a roughly 10-minute hearing scheduled just hours before it was held via a conference call, she repeatedly berated the plaintiffs’ lawyers for the manner in which they brought the case. She also faulted what she considered to be their weak arguments for immediately reinstating the eight inspectors general, who performed oversight of the Departments of Defense, State, Education, Agriculture, Labor, Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services, as well as the Small Business Administration.At one point Judge Reyes, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., went as far as to threaten the plaintiffs with court sanctions if they did not immediately withdraw their emergency request so the case could proceed on a slower timeline. The plaintiffs initially refused, but eventually assented after further criticism from Judge Reyes.President Trump has moved swiftly to purge federal agencies in his first weeks in office, targeting many executive branch officials whose positions are supposed to be protected from being fired without cause. Inspectors general, who monitor their assigned agencies for fraud, waste and other misbehavior, are among those officials who have statutory restrictions on how they can be fired, ones that Congress tightened after Mr. Trump dismissed some inspectors general during his first term.The inspectors general in this case had argued that a judge’s order this week to temporarily reinstate another government watchdog — Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel — while that court challenge progresses had supported their own request to have the inspectors general immediately reinstated while their case proceeds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Attacks D.E.I., Wall Street Worries

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      Goldman Sachs will drop a demand that corporate boards of directors include women and members of minority groups as financial firms backpedal from D.E.I. promises.Wall Street has not typically been accused of doing too much for women and minority groups. The financial services industry, after all, is one in which more major banks are named after the Morgan family than led by a female chief executive.So it meant something over the past half-decade or so when the biggest names in finance said, over and over again, that they would pour dollars and effort into lending to, hiring, promoting and working with underserved communities.And it means something else now, as many of those much-promoted policies and practices are being scrubbed to be sure they don’t wind up in the cross hairs of the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion.The retreat includes white-collar investment banks, consultancies, mutual funds and stock exchanges. The latest was Goldman Sachs, which said on Tuesday that it would drop a quota that forced corporate boards of directors to include women and members of minority groups. Others on Wall Street are curtailing efforts to recruit Black and Latino employees.One international bank, BNP Paribas, even hit the brakes on programming new events for next month’s International Women’s Day.This pullback has thus far been less overt than, say, in the technology industry, whose executives have made public displays of their support for President Trump’s anti-diversity initiatives. And some financial firms had started to make changes long before the election — opening programs aimed at minority candidates to all, for example.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      36 Hours After Russell Vought Took Over Consumer Bureau, He Shut Its Operations

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      The agency had been one of Wall Street’s most feared regulators, with the power to issue rules on mortgages, credit cards, student loans and other areas affecting Americans’ financial lives.The day before Linda Wetzel closed on her retirement home in Southport, N.C., in 2012 — a cozy place where she could open the windows at night and catch an ocean breeze — the bank making the loan surprised her with a fee she hadn’t expected. Ms. Wetzel scoured her mortgage paperwork and couldn’t find the charge disclosed anywhere.Ms. Wetzel made the payment and then filed an online complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bank quickly opened an investigation, and a month later, it sent her a $5,600 check.“My first thought was ‘thank you.’ I was in tears,” she recalled. “That money was a year or two of savings on my mortgage. It was my little nest egg.”Ms. Wetzel’s refund is a tiny piece of the work the bureau has done since it was created in 2011. It has clawed back $21 billion for consumers. It slashed overdraft fees, reformed the student loan servicing market, transformed mortgage lending rules and forced banks and money transmitters to compensate fraud victims.It may no longer be able to carry out that work.President Trump on Friday appointed Russell Vought, who was confirmed a day earlier to lead the Office of Management and Budget, as the agency’s acting director. Mr. Vought was an author of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for upending the federal government that called for significant changes, including abolishing the consumer bureau.In less than 36 hours, Mr. Vought threw the agency into chaos. On Saturday, he ordered the bureau’s 1,700 employees to stop nearly all their work and announced plans to cut off the agency’s funding. Then on Sunday, he closed the bureau’s headquarters for the coming week. Workers who tried to retrieve their laptops from the office were turned away, employees said.The bureau “has been a woke & weaponized agency against disfavored industries and individuals for a long time,” Mr. Vought wrote Sunday on X. “This must end.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Devin Nunes, Pugnacious Trump Loyalist, to Lead Espionage Advisory Board

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      As chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he attacked the Russia inquiry and Donald J. Trump’s first impeachment. Now, Mr. Nunes runs Mr. Trump’s social media company.President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would appoint Devin Nunes, a former member of Congress who had used his role as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to try to delegitimize the Trump-Russia investigation, to head an independent advisory board on espionage policy.The organization — the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board — dates back to the early Cold War and consists of private citizens with top-level security clearances who are supposed to help the White House analyze spy agency effectiveness and planning. Its members do not need Senate confirmation, so presidents can pick whomever they want for it.In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Nunes — who is currently the chief executive of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform — for his counterinvestigation into the Trump-Russia inquiry in 2017-18, when Mr. Nunes led the House Intelligence Committee as a Republican congressman from California.“While continuing his leadership of Trump Media & Technology Group, Devin will draw on his experience as former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and his key role in exposing the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, to provide me with independent assessments of the effectiveness and propriety of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s activities,” Mr. Trump wrote in his announcement.Some members of the advisory board also serve on a presidential Intelligence Oversight Board, which was created in the 1970s after a congressional investigation into abuses by national security agencies and which tries to ferret out illegal spying activities. That group typically includes the larger board’s chair, so it is likely that Mr. Nunes will participate in it as well.The work products of the two boards are usually kept secret. A rare exception came in 2023, when the Biden administration publicly released a report in which the two panels urged Congress to extend an expiring law that authorizes a warrantless surveillance program, but also called for new limits on the F.B.I.’s ability to use information gathered under the program.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Considers Kennedy’s Daughter-in-Law for C.I.A. Deputy Director

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      Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to the son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., raised alarms for publishing a book about her work at the agency without going through a review process.President-elect Donald J. Trump is considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law to serve as the deputy director at the C.I.A., according to four people briefed on the matter.Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, 44, a former C.I.A. officer who is married to Mr. Kennedy’s son, met with Mr. Trump last week to discuss the job, the people said. The position does not require Senate confirmation, unlike the director job.Mr. Kennedy, who is the president-elect’s choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is among those encouraging Mr. Trump to hire her, according to two people close to the Trump transition team. Like others interviewed for this article, they spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.In an interview in 2023, Mr. Kennedy said it was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the C.I.A. was involved in the assassination of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963.Ms. Fox Kennedy, who served as her father-in-law’s campaign manager, has raised alarms within the agency and among some lawmakers, in part because she published a book about her time in the C.I.A. in 2019 — while Mr. Trump was president — without going through the lengthy government review process required to check that classified information is not made public.Some former officials questioned details in the book about Ms. Fox Kennedy’s meetings in Pakistan with Islamic extremists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Picks Kimberly Guilfoyle, His Son’s Fiancée, as Ambassador to Greece

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      The announcement came as Donald Trump Jr. has been seen with the socialite Bettina Anderson in Florida.It was an announcement made amid a swirl of tabloid speculation: Kimberly Guilfoyle, a loyalist of President-elect Donald J. Trump and — more pointedly — the fiancée of his son Donald Jr. had been named ambassador to Greece.The timing of the move — early Tuesday evening — would have been unremarkable except for what preceded it: rumors that the president-elect’s eldest son was dating a socialite, Bettina Anderson.The new relationship was seemingly documented in a series of photos published earlier on Tuesday by the British tabloid The Daily Mail, which described them as “incontrovertible proof the soon-to-be First Son has moved on” with a “stunning ‘it girl.’”Andrew Surabian, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, 46, did not return a request for comment on his relationship with Ms. Anderson, or on his engagement with Ms. Guilfoyle, to whom he has been betrothed since late 2020. Ms. Anderson, 38, also did not return requests for comment.In his announcement of her posting to Greece, the president-elect called Ms. Guilfoyle “a close friend and ally,” but made no mention of her relationship with his son.“Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States,” the elder Mr. Trump wrote, in a post on Truth Social.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Scott Bessent, Trump’s Pick for Treasury Secretary, Doesn’t Fit the President-Elect’s Loyalist Mold

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      A hedge-fund titan who worked for George Soros. A deep-rooted Southerner with a fondness for high-end real estate. A gay man, married with children. Who is Scott Bessent?A capitalist with a soft spot for royalty. A deep-rooted Southerner with a fondness for stylish New York locales. A gay man, married with children, who has embraced a Republican Party that has sometimes vilified elements, and individuals, of the L.G.B.T.Q. movement.Such are the crosscurrents coursing through the biography of Scott Bessent, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary. The appointment would give him vast power over the nation’s economic plans — and place him fifth in line for the presidency, potentially the highest governmental position ever held by a gay person.A hedge-fund titan with a formidable professional pedigree, Mr. Bessent, 62, has been a quiet presence in New York’s social scene since the 1990s, when he worked for George Soros, the liberal megadonor and financier, eventually managing tens of billions of dollars in assets.He counts among his friends a group of elegant socialites and women of the world, Capote-ian swans of a different era, including the president-elect’s former sister-in-law Blaine Trump, Princess Firyal of Jordan and Queen Camilla, whom he once hosted at his Hamptons home — and forced to smoke her cigarettes outside. He is friends, too, with King Charles III, who has regularly hosted him at Buckingham Palace. Mr. Bessent no longer has a home in New York City, and is instead schooling his two children, Charlotte and Cole, ages 11 and 15, in London with his husband, John Freeman, a former assistant district attorney in the Bronx, whom he married in 2011. The family also has homes in Charleston, S.C. — the state where Mr. Bessent was raised — and in Lyford Cay, a gated community in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, which advertises itself as “one of the Caribbean’s most elegant and exclusive enclaves.”But Mr. Bessent’s family history is also pocked with hardships, including two bankruptcies for his father — a decade apart, in 1969 and 1979 — and the 2022 death of his younger sister, Wyn Nicole Bessent, who had worked as a public defender and seemingly lived a simpler life far removed from her brother’s glittering existence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Storm King to Begin 2025 With Nora Lawrence as Executive Director

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      The family-run Hudson Valley sculpture park inaugurates its 65th anniversary year with fresh leadership, a $53-million upgrade and new acquisitions.Storm King Art Center, the 500-acre outdoor museum, announced on Tuesday that Nora Lawrence, its artistic director and chief curator, will succeed its president, John P. Stern, as the institution’s leader in January. It also announced a series of commissions and acquisitions, and a solo show by the Brazilian visual artist Sonia Gomes.It is the first time that Storm King — founded in 1960 by Stern’s grandfather, Ralph E. Ogden, and father, H. Peter Stern, in New Windsor, N.Y. — will be stewarded by someone from outside their family.In choosing Storm King’s inaugural executive director, the board decided to forgo a typical search and unanimously select Lawrence, who rose through the ranks over 13 years, starting as an associate curator.From left, the artist Sarah Sze and Lawrence on the grounds of Storm King in 2021.Lila Barth for The New York Times“There is no one more qualified to take the helm than Nora Lawrence, with whom I’ve had the privilege of working closely and whose artistic vision has helped make Storm King the international destination that it is today,” Stern wrote in a statement. He took the reins from his father in 2008 and now, at age 64, will transition to a position as the board’s president and senior adviser; his two sisters also serve on the board of the nonprofit organization.The generational change — Lawrence is 45 — is part of the “transformation from Storm King being a wonderful, family-led organization to becoming increasingly a more public-facing organization in every way,” said Adam D. Weinberg, a Storm King board member, who stepped down as director of the Whitney Museum last year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More