Elon Musk

The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reports, in a move that will undermine its ability to provide oversight as he implements hardline immigration policies.Here’s more on the significance of the office’s closure, from the Times:
The more than 100 staff members were told they would be put on leave and formally fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. Mr. Trump also closed the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies.
The moves were the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to root out civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms across government agencies. But the shuttering of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was particularly notable given the lack of transparency over the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump has been determined in his second term to ensure that his administration is made of up of loyalists who will not try to block his agenda.
Just this week, the Trump administration stonewalled a federal judge seeking information about the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants with little to no due process to a prison in El Salvador.
“It’s a demonstration of their total contempt for any checks on their power,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former civil rights office worker and chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. She said the office “endeavored to make the D.H.S. mission work with respect for civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”
“This is a clear message that those things do not matter to this administration,” she added.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”
“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
NYT: Does the $400m of federal cuts at Columbia have special signficance for Trump? The New York Times has highlighted a decades-old real estate dispute between Columbia University and Donald Trump, noting that dispute also hinged over $400m.Today, the newspaper reports:
Some former university officials are quietly wondering whether the ultimately unsuccessful property transaction sowed the seeds of Mr. Trump’s current focus on Columbia. His administration has demanded that the university turn over vast control of its policies and even curricular decisions in its effort to quell antisemitism on campus. It has also canceled federal grants and contracts at Columbia — valued at $400 million.
The New York Times reports that the Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment on the story.Why didn’t Columbia University file a lawsuit to fight back against Trump? Yesterday, the Chronicle of Higher Education asked why Columbia, one of the wealthiest private institutions in the US, had not filed a lawsuit to protect itself from the political demands Trump was making.Today, after Columbia announced it was giving into several of the president’s demand, an unnamed Columbia University administrator offered several reasons for Columbia’s choice not to battle Trump in court, including that school leaders had some agreement with what Trump wanted, the Wall Street Journal reports:
A Columbia senior administrator said the school considered legal options to challenge the Trump team but ultimately determined the federal government has so many available levers to claw back money, it would be a difficult fight. Additionally the school believed there was considerable overlap between needed campus changes and Trump’s demands.
How US news organizations are characterizing Columbia’s deal with Trump:Wall Street Journal: Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal FundingNew York Post: Columbia caves to Trump’s demands after $400M threat over campus antisemitism, will institute mask ban and more oversightNew York Times: Columbia Makes Concessions to Trump Amid Bid to Reclaim Federal FundsAxios: Columbia complies with Trump demands to regain $400 million in fundingColumbia University has agreed to a series of changes demanded by the Trump Administration as a precondition for restoring $400m in federal funding the government pulled this month amid allegations that the school tolerated antisemitism on campus, Reuters reports. More reactions to this news shortly, but first, what Reuters is reporting:
Columbia acquiesced to most of the administration’s demands in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals, and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty.
The Ivy League university’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has sanctioned as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.Among the most contentious of the nine demands, Columbia agreed to place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department under a new official, the memo said, taking control away from its faculty. The demand had raised alarm among professors at Columbia and elsewhere, who worried that permitting the federal government to dictate how a department is run would set a dangerous precedent.
Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives last year criticized at least two professors of Palestinian descent working in the department for their comments about the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The school has also hired three dozen special officers who have the power to arrest people on campus and has revised its anti-discrimination policies, including its authority to sanction campus organizations, the memo said. The school also said it is searching for new faculty members to “ensure intellectual diversity.”
A few more key details from today’s deportation flights hearingAs we noted earlier, judge James Boasberg spent some time in a hearing today criticizing the justice department’s conduct and rhetoric in the lawsuit over whether the Trump administration can use an 18th century wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelans to El Salvador.But the judge also took issue with the substance of their legal argument. During Friday’s hearing, Boasberg also said the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan immigrants carries “incredibly troublesome” policy ramifications, the Associated Press reported. “Why was this law essentially signed in the dark and these people essentially rushed on to planes?” Boasberg asked. “It seems to be that you only do that if you know it’s a problem and you want to get them out of the country before lawsuits can be filed.”The judge pointed to the US supreme court’s finding that people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay after the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks were entitled to challenge whether they had any ties to al-Qaida.Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports that Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU, also said at the hearing that some people on the deportation flights from the US to El Salvador were returned from El Salvador after the government refused to take them, raising more questions about the speed of the deportations.A federal judge and the Trump administration have been engaged in a very active stalemate all week over whether Trump’s justice department violated the judge’s order to turn around planes that were in the act of deporting people to El Salvador under a legally contentious “wartime” law.To put it more bluntly, the issue is whether the Trump administration has to listen to what judges tell them to do and what consequences the administration will face if they simply decide they don’t have to.Trump and many of his supporters have called for the judge’s impeachment over his insistence that the Trump administration is bound by court orders; John Roberts, the chief justice of US supreme court, made a rare public statement to say that what Republicans were doing was not proper behavior.Here’s the latest from the AP:
A federal judge examining the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador vowed Friday to “get to the bottom” of whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around.Chief Judge James Boasberg is trying to determine if the administration ignored his turnaround order last weekend when at least two planeloads of immigrants were still in flight.“I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said during a hearing Friday for a lawsuit challenging the deportations.Earlier Friday, the Justice Department informed the judge that top leaders in President Donald Trump’s administration are debating whether to invoke a “state secrets privilege” in response to the district judge’s questions about the deportation flights.The Republican administration has largely resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition. Boasberg dismissed its response as “woefully insufficient,” increasing the possibility that he may hold administration officials in contempt of court.
Denmark and Finland urge caution for US-bound transgender peopleDenmark and Finland have updated their US travel advice for transgender people, joining the handful of European countries that have sought to caution US-bound travelers in recent weeks as reports emerge of ordeals at the American border, my colleague Ashifa Kassam, our European affairs correspondent, reports.Denmark said this week it had begun advising transgender travelers to contact the US embassy in Copenhagen before departure to ensure there would be no issues with travel documents.“If your passport has the gender designation X or you have changed gender, it is recommended to contact the US embassy prior to travel for guidance on how to proceed,” the Danish travel advisory page now reads.Good news for white collar criminals? Hundreds resigning at Wall Street’s top regulatorWall Street’s top regulator is facing a staff exodus across key departments as hundreds have agreed to take resignation offers amid Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to remake the US government, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters.Departures from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, including by senior staff and enforcement lawyers, could significantly hamper the watchdog’s efforts to police markets and protect investors, the sources said. The exits stem from Trump and Musk’s efforts to slash the federal workforce.Since the White House began offering voluntary departures across the civil service in January, more than 600 people have agreed to leave the SEC, said two sources with direct knowledge and two people briefed on the matter. Friday is the deadline for the SEC’s latest resignation incentive programs.US court will not pause ruling requiring Trump administration to reinstate 25,000 workersA US appeals court refused to pause a judge’s ruling requiring the administration of President Donald Trump to reinstate 25,000 workers at 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump’s purge of the federal workforce, Reuters reports.The 18 agencies involved in the case include the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services and the Treasury Department.Most agencies have said that they fired a few hundred probationary workers, but others terminated far more. The treasury department fired about 7,600 people, the Department of Agriculture about 5,700 and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to court filings.The Trump administration has moved to fire almost all employees at the homeland security department’s civil rights office, the New York Times reports, in a move that will undermine its ability to provide oversight as he implements hardline immigration policies.Here’s more on the significance of the office’s closure, from the Times:
The more than 100 staff members were told they would be put on leave and formally fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. Mr. Trump also closed the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for scrutinizing the administration’s legal immigration policies.
The moves were the latest attempt by Mr. Trump to root out civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms across government agencies. But the shuttering of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties was particularly notable given the lack of transparency over the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump has been determined in his second term to ensure that his administration is made of up of loyalists who will not try to block his agenda.
Just this week, the Trump administration stonewalled a federal judge seeking information about the use of an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants with little to no due process to a prison in El Salvador.
“It’s a demonstration of their total contempt for any checks on their power,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a former civil rights office worker and chief of staff of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Biden administration. She said the office “endeavored to make the D.H.S. mission work with respect for civil rights, civil liberties and privacy.”
“This is a clear message that those things do not matter to this administration,” she added.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the decision was meant to “streamline oversight to remove roadblocks to enforcement.”
“These offices have obstructed immigration enforcement by adding bureaucratic hurdles and undermining D.H.S.’s mission,” Ms. McLaughlin said. “Rather than supporting law enforcement efforts, they often function as internal adversaries that slow down operations.”
Donald Trump’s purge of all DEI-related initiatives in the US government has had the knock-on effect of undercutting efforts to fight trafficking, the Guardian’s Katie McQue reports:The US government has ordered law enforcement agencies, the state department and some non-profit organizations working to combat sex trafficking to remove references to victims’ LGBTQ+ identities, race and immigration status from their communications and websites, a move experts warn will endanger vulnerable minors.Interviews with a prosecutor, government personnel, trafficking non-profit executives, as well as email correspondence reviewed by the Guardian show that agencies and organizations are complying with the orders to avoid losing federal funding. Experts in child safety say the policy is fostering a climate of fear, forcing organizations to acquiesce in order to retain crucial funding at the expense of helping victims.The directive stems from executive orders issued by Donald Trump targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and LGBTQ+ communities. Some non-profits receiving federal funding have been prohibited from using the terms “marginalized”, “vulnerable” and “immigrants” in correspondence from grant funders.Donald Trump signed the executive orders nixing DEI on 20 January, the day of the presidential inauguration. One order, titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”, mandates the removal of policies, programs, and activities relating to “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility”. Another, titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” instructs the removal of all “radical gender ideology guidance, communication, policies, and forms”.Politico reports that the federal judge weighing the legality of the Trump administration’s rapid deportation of suspected Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act is criticizing the justice department’s conduct in the case.Recent filings from the government have used “the kind of intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States”, judge James Boasberg said at the hearing, which is ongoing.More about this ongoing legal battle, in which the Trump administration may have allowed planes carrying the migrants to proceed to El Salvador despite Boasberg’s order:We are now two months in to Donald Trump’s second term, but his predecessor Joe Biden reportedly continues to believe that he could still be in office right now, if only things had gone a little differently.“Biden has no pangs of regret, a person familiar with his private conversations said. He remains defiant and believes Trump’s victory shows the party did itself no favors by pushing him to drop out of the race, the source said,” NBC News reports today in a piece looking at Biden’s low-key life since exiting the White House on 20 January.It’s hard to prove a negative, but let’s briefly recount the facts of Biden’s botched re-election bid: his decision to embark on it in the first place, even though his approval ratings were poor, the months of campaigning that did little to change public opinion, his disastrous debate against Trump, the pressure campaign from his own allies that led him to quit and hand over to Kamala Harris, to no avail.Nonetheless, NBC reports that Joe and Jill Biden have offered their services to the Democratic party, should they need them:
Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.
Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.
So far, Biden’s overture seems to have fallen flat. Democrats find themselves adrift, casting about for a compelling messenger.
Whoever that is, it’s not Biden, many party activists and donors contend. He’s tethered to the 2024 defeat and, at 82, is a symbol more of the party’s past than its future, they argue.
“Who’s going to want Joe Biden back in the game?” said a major Biden supporter, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about him.
White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino has tweeted out a better photo of the F-47 fighter jet, which Donald Trump announced in the Oval Office earlier today:As defense secretary Pete Hegseth was leaving the White House, he encountered reporters who wanted to know if the jet’s numerical designation – 47 – had anything to do with Trump, who is the 47th president. Hegseth did not respond.A Minnesota veteran who found work at the Veterans Benefits Administration after suffering two traumatic brain injuries on overseas deployments stood in front of hundreds of people and five Democratic state attorneys general on Thursday night and recalled the moment she learned she lost her job.“All I was given was a Post-it note,” Joy Marver said, inspiring gasps and boos from a raucous crowd. “The Post-it note contained just the HR email address and my supervisor’s phone number. This came from an external source. Doge terminated me. No one in my chain of command knew I was being terminated. No one knew. It took two weeks to get my termination email sent to me.”The firing was so demoralizing she said she considered driving her truck off a bridge but instead went into the VA for crisis care.“Don’t fuck with a veteran,” she concluded.For the full story, click here: More