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      Trump Loses Bid to Pause Ruling on Federal Funding Freeze

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      The ruling let stand a district court judge’s order that had blocked agencies from categorically pausing federal funds based on guidance from the Office of Management and Budget.A federal appeals court on Wednesday left in place a lower court’s ruling that blocked the Office of Management and Budget from enacting a sweeping freeze on federal funding to states, writing that it posed an obvious risk to states that depend on the money.The decision denied a request from the Trump administration to stay a ruling by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island this month. Judge McConnell found that the administration had effectively subverted Congress in choking off funds in ways that jeopardized state governments and the services they provide their residents.A coalition of nearly two dozen attorneys general from Democratic-led states had sued in January to halt the freeze. They argued that the funding, including critical disaster relief disbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and early childhood education support provided through Head Start, had all been thrown into doubt.In their opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit wrote that the freeze would cause the states an array of irreparable harms, including forced taking on of debt, “impediments to planning, hiring and operations,” and disruptions to research projects underway at state universities.In its original guidance at issue in the lawsuit, the Office of Management and Budget had advised agencies that the pause pertained only to funding streams that were affected by some of President Trump’s early executive orders, such as those aimed at ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and climate change funds.The states behind the lawsuit, however, argued that the pause had been conducted chaotically and had caused significant upheaval, preventing them from gaining access to federal grants that seemed to fall outside those orders.As an example, in a filing on Wednesday night, an assistant attorney general from Illinois said that the state was still unable to attain money through the Earthquake State Assistance grant program.In their opinion declining to stay Judge McConnell’s preliminary injunction, the judges wrote that the states had documented numerous cases of “pauses, freezes, and sudden terminations of obligated funds” suggesting that the freeze on federal funds was often indiscriminate. The arbitrary nature of the freeze, they wrote, further suggested that the coalition of states was likely to prevail in the lawsuit. More

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      U.S. Could Run Out of Cash by May, Budget Office Predicts

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      The Congressional Budget Office said that the so-called X-date could occur as early as spring if Congress does not lift or suspend the nation’s debt limit.The U.S. could run out of money to pay its bills by late May if Congress does not raise or suspend the nation’s debt limit, the Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday.The forecast puts added pressure on Congress and the Trump administration to address the borrowing cap, which restricts the total amount of money that the United States is authorized to borrow to fund the government and meet its financial obligations. A protracted standoff later this year could rattle markets and complicate President Trump’s plans to enact more tax cuts.The C.B.O. noted that its forecast is subject to uncertainty over how much tax revenue the federal government will collect this year. It expects that the United States will have sufficient funds to keep paying bills through August or September. However, it said that if borrowing needs exceed its projections, the U.S. could run out of cash by late May or sometime in June.“The projected exhaustion date is uncertain because the timing and amount of revenue collections and outlays over the intervening months could differ from C.B.O.’s projections,” the budget office said in a report.The so-called X-date is the moment when the United States is unable to pay its bills, including interest payments to investors who hold government debt. Failure to meet those obligations could result in the United States defaulting on its debt. The U.S. has never defaulted on its debt, which is considered one of the safest investments in the world, and brinkmanship over missed payments could be economically damaging.The national debt is now approaching $37 trillion. Lawmakers agreed in June 2023 to suspend the $31.4 trillion debt limit until Jan. 1, 2025.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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      Columbia University’s Concessions to Trump Seen as a Watershed

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      Threatened with losing $400 million in federal funding, the university agreed to overhaul its protest policies and security practices.Many professors saw it as surrender, a reward to the Trump administration’s heavy hand. Conservative critics of academia celebrated it as an overdue, righteous reset by an Ivy League university.Columbia University’s concession on Friday to a roster of government demands as it sought to restore about $400 million in federal funding is being widely viewed as a watershed in Washington’s relationships with the nation’s colleges.By design, the consequences will be felt immediately on Columbia’s campus, where, for example, some security personnel will soon have arrest powers and an academic department that had drawn conservative scrutiny is expected to face stringent oversight. But they also stand to shape colleges far from Manhattan. “Columbia is folding and the other universities will follow suit,” Christopher Rufo, an activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, wrote on social media after the university’s announcement on Friday.“They must restore the pursuit of truth, rather than ideological activism, as their highest mission,” said Mr. Rufo, who is close to the Trump administration and has helped make battles against diversity and equity into a conservative rallying cry. He added: “This is only the beginning.”The end is not clear. Columbia’s moves on Friday — revealed in a letter to the campus from the interim president, Dr. Katrina A. Armstrong — were essentially an opening bid in negotiations with the federal government to let the $400 million flow again. But the Trump administration has not publicly said what other concessions it might seek from Columbia or the dozens of other universities, from Hawaii to Harvard, that it has started to scrutinize since taking power on Jan. 20.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 Administration Halts Funding for Legal Representation of Migrant Children

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      The Trump administration notified aid organizations across the country on Friday that it would cancel a contract that funds the legal representation of more than 25,000 children who entered the United States alone, a decision that leaves them vulnerable to swift deportation.In a memo reviewed by The New York Times, the government instructed more than 100 nonprofits to immediately cease their work representing the minors. It terminated a contract that was up for renewal on March 29.Advocates said the move would fast-track the children’s court cases, to their disadvantage, because many would be left without counsel in adversarial immigration proceedings. Children as young as 2 who are survivors of trafficking, trauma and abuse, and who are often too young to understand their legal rights, would be returned to countries where they could face harm, the advocates said.“Children cannot be expected to navigate the harsh and complicated immigration legal system without an attorney,” said Ashley Harrington, managing attorney for the children’s program at Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Colorado.“This brazen, heartless act endangers children’s lives,” she said.The nonprofit represents about 200 minors, including three siblings, ages 7 to 13, who fled to the United States from Honduras alone last year after their parents were killed by gang members.The number of children who have crossed the southern U.S. border each year without a parent or legal guardian has increased sharply in the last decade or so, reaching 128,000 in the 2022 fiscal year, according to government data. Most of them are from Central America.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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      Food Banks Left in the Lurch as U.S.D.A. Shipments Are Suspended

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      Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.Vince Hall, chief of government relations for Feeding America, a nationwide network of over 60,000 food pantries and other distributors, said that when he asked U.S.D.A. officials about the suspended shipments, he was told that the department was reviewing the food aid programs funded through the Commodity Credit Corporation.It was unclear whether the review was related to the activities of Elon Musk’s DOGE team, which has sought to curtail spending across the government.The halt to the funds, which was first reported by Politico, comes in addition to other recent cuts to federal food assistance. Earlier this month, the Agriculture Department halted two other programs that distributed food to banks and schools. Lawmakers are also mulling cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, which were used by about 42 million people in the 2023 fiscal year.Food bank directors fear that an across-the-board contraction to federal food assistance could drive more people to food banks just as they are losing access to critical supplementary funds.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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      Nonprofit’s Leader Convicted of Siphoning Off $240 Million in Federal Food Aid

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      Aimee Bock was accused of overseeing a scheme that exploited lax pandemic-era controls, and reaped millions with fake invoices for nonexistent meals.The leader of a Minnesota anti-hunger nonprofit was convicted in U.S. District Court on Wednesday of masterminding a brazen scheme that reaped more than $240 million in pandemic relief funds with a network of bogus food kitchens that billed the government for 91 million meals.The nonprofit’s leader, Aimee Bock, 44, was convicted by a jury of seven counts, including wire fraud and bribery. Another defendant, Salim Said — a 36-year-old who oversaw one of the bogus kitchens — was convicted of 20 counts, also including wire fraud and bribery.When Ms. Bock was charged in 2022, federal prosecutors said her scheme was the largest known fraud against the government’s Covid-19 relief programs.At least 70 people were charged in the scheme, and more than 40 have already pleaded guilty or been convicted. Last year, another case related to the same scandal made national news, when someone attempted to bribe a juror in a separate trial by leaving about $120,000 in cash at her home in a Hallmark gift bag. Five people were later charged with bribery in that case.After Wednesday’s verdicts were read, Judge Nancy Brasel ordered that Ms. Bock and Mr. Said remain in jail to await their sentencing, according to a report from the courtroom by The Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom. The charges carry potential sentences of more than a decade in prison.The fraud scheme targeted two programs meant to feed hungry children, which were funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture but administered by the state of Minnesota. The system relied on nonprofit groups called “sponsors” to be its watchdogs. They were supposed to oversee individual kitchens and feeding sites and make sure they were not inflating the number of children they served.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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      E.P.A. Offers No New Evidence in Battle Over $20 Billion in Climate Grants

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      Nonprofit groups have sued the agency to get access to grants approved by Congress to fund climate and clean energy projects across the country.In a legal filing Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency did not provide direct evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse in a $20 billion climate grant program that the agency canceled citing “unacceptable risk.”For weeks, the grant program has been mired in controversy, with its funds frozen, as the E.P.A. attempted to claw back money that was approved by Congress for clean energy programs. At least three of the grant recipients have filed lawsuits seeking access to the funds they were promised.Last week, a federal judge ordered the E.P.A. to justify its moves to freeze the funds and cancel the program. The motion stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Climate United, a nonprofit group that was supposed to receive $7 billion under the initiative.But in response to the judge’s order on Monday, the E.P.A. did not present new direct evidence. Instead, it referred to unidentified media reports as well as a video released last year by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents.The video, filmed in a social setting, showed an E.P.A. staff member at the time, talking about the outgoing Biden administration’s efforts to quickly spend federal money. He compared it to throwing “gold bars” off the Titanic. A lawyer for the former staff member has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.But Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has seized on the video and has repeatedly suggested the grants were vulnerable to fraud. At the request of the Trump administration, the $20 billion allocated to eight nonprofit groups have been frozen in accounts held at Citibank.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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      ‘A Really Easy Mark for Trump’: Three Columnists on the Threats to Elite Colleges

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      Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists M. Gessen, Tressie McMillan Cottom and Bret Stephens about Donald Trump’s attacks on Columbia University and other elite colleges and how they became vulnerable to a political and ideological reckoning.Patrick Healy: Bret, Tressie, Masha, I spoke on Thursday to a university president who told me he was just advised to hire a bodyguard. He said he’d never seen so much fear in the world of higher education — that many college presidents are “scared to death” about the Trump administration cutting their funding, Elon Musk unleashing Twitter mobs on them, ICE agents coming on campus, angry email flooding their inboxes, student protests over Gaza and Israel, and worries about being targeted for violence. I was a higher education reporter two decades ago, when universities were widely admired in America, and so I asked this president — what went wrong?He said presidents and professors had taken too many things for granted — they thought they’d always be seen as a “public good” benefiting society, but came to be seen as elitist and condescending toward regular Americans. And Americans hate a lot of things, but they really hate elites condescending to them. Now we are seeing a big reckoning for higher education — ideological, cultural, financial — driven by Donald Trump and the right.So I want to start by asking you the question I asked the university president — what went wrong for higher ed? How did colleges become easy pickings?Bret Stephens: Big question; lots of answers.The moment I realized something had gone terribly, maybe irreversibly, wrong in higher ed came in 2015, when Nicholas Christakis, a distinguished sociobiologist at Yale, was surrounded, hounded, lectured and yelled at by students furious that his wife, Erika, had suggested in an email that perhaps students could be entrusted to make their own Halloween costume decisions. The incident encapsulated the entitlement, the arrogance and the unbearably petty grievances of a generation who seemed to find their voice and power in the taking of offense. I was left asking: Who admitted these students? Who taught them to think this way? And why weren’t they immediately suspended or expelled?Healy: I remember that moment. A Harvard friend texted me and said, Glad you didn’t go to Yale? Then she backtracked with there-by-the-grace-of-God-goes-Harvard humility.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