Government Efficiency Department (US)

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    Tribes and Students Sue Trump Administration Over Firings at Native Schools

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    A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education.The firings, part of the series of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut thousands of federal jobs since January, included nearly one quarter of the staff members at the only two federally run colleges for Native people in the country: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.Instructors, a basketball coach, and security and maintenance workers were among those who were fired or forced to resign in February. Although the total number of layoffs was not clear on Sunday, the reductions also included employees at the central and regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency. Some staff members, but not all, have been rehired, according to a statement from the Native American Rights Fund, which filed the suit on Friday in federal court in Washington. About 45,000 children are enrolled in bureau-funded schools in 23 states.As a result of the cuts, dozens of courses at the two colleges lost instructors, according to the lawsuit. And because of the loss of support staff and maintenance workers, school dorms were quickly overrun with garbage, students reported undrinkable brown water, dining halls failed to adequately feed students, and widespread power outages hampered students’ ability to study.“Unfortunately, these firings were done without preparation and without regard to the health and safety of the students, and that is a continuation of a history of neglect and disrespect,” Jacqueline De León, a lawyer for the tribes and students, said. “We are here to fight to make sure that it doesn’t continue.”Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit against the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs.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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      Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

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      Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.During a demonstration on Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Mr. Musk also owns SpaceX.)Shots were fired at the Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore., this week.Tigard Police DepartmentSeveral hundred protesters remained there for two hours, organizers said, blocking entrances and shutting down the dealership.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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      Elon Musk Meets With Senate Republicans Amid Tensions Over Federal Cuts

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      Elon Musk heads to Capitol Hill for a diplomatic mission.Yesterday, Senate Republicans were quick to give Elon Musk a standing ovation in the House chamber as President Trump heaped praise on his efforts to overhaul the federal government.Today, though, they seized the opportunity to ask him some questions privately: an hour and 45 minutes’ worth of questions, to be exact.Musk’s foray into government led the world’s richest man, a person who intends to colonize Mars, to find himself in the more earthly confines of Senate Republicans’ regular Wednesday lunch.A phalanx of photographers and reporters waited in a Senate hallway, under a portrait of the former senator from Massachusetts Charles Sumner, hoping to get a chance to ask Musk about his first diplomatic mission to Capitol Hill since Trump took office.Photographers’ lenses swiveled every time someone came around the corner.“Not me!” Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said at one point. “Next one.”Musk appeared shortly behind him, deep in conversation with Senator Rick Scott of Florida, before disappearing into the lunchroom.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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      In Speech to Congress, Trump Is Expected to Boast About DOGE Cuts and Ukraine

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      President Trump is expected to boast about his assault on the federal bureaucracy and his efforts to upend global relationships during an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, even as his administration faces lawsuits over his domestic agenda and Europe rebukes him over his treatment of Ukraine.Addressing his largest television audience since his return to power, Mr. Trump is expected to speak about the speed with which he has pushed through reductions in border crossings, cuts to government through the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, and a slew of executive orders. He is also expected to emphasize the need to pass his legislative agenda, which includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts.“He’s going to talk about the great things he’s done: The border’s secure, the waste he’s finding with DOGE,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who speaks frequently with Mr. Trump. “He’s going to keep laying out his vision, where he wants the country to go.”For Mr. Trump, it will be a remarkable return to a chamber — and a prime-time, nationwide audience — he last addressed five years ago, before voters ousted him from office and replaced him with Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Trump’s return has set in motion a rapid-fire series of actions designed to overturn decades of policy and diplomacy.During his first term, the president delivered an annual speech to Congress that included a mix of exaggerations and grievance-filled attacks on his enemies. He is poised to do the same again on Tuesday night, using one of the largest platforms that any modern president gets during his time in the Oval Office.Mr. Trump hinted on Monday that he might use the speech to extend his public feud with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after the Oval Office blowup between the two leaders last week. Asked by a reporter whether a deal to share rare-earth minerals was still possible after the shouting, Mr. Trump said that “I’ll let you know,” adding: “We’re making a speech, you probably heard.”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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      Judge Appears Skeptical of Claims That Musk Isn’t Driving DOGE

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      The judge prodded government lawyers for additional clarity on Elon Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of his operation and his part in the rapid reshaping of government.A federal judge said on Friday that it seemed “factually inaccurate” for the Trump administration to keep insisting that Elon Musk has no formal position in an operation that has led to mass firings of federal workers and the hobbling of the nation’s foreign aid agency.The judge, Theodore D. Chuang of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, prodded government lawyers repeatedly for additional clarity on Mr. Musk’s role in a case that directly challenges the constitutionality of the task force known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or the U.S. DOGE Service.Until this week, government officials had resisted answering inquiries as to who was formally in charge of the task force, except to say that it was not Mr. Musk. (Nor is Mr. Musk among its employees, the government said.) On Tuesday, a White House official said that Amy Gleason, a former health care investment executive, was serving as the acting administrator.On Friday, Joshua E. Gardner, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s civil division, denied that Mr. Musk had any role with the Department of Government Efficiency. This despite Mr. Musk’s clearly driving its initiatives, including an email blasted out last weekend that attempted to require all federal employees to respond with a list of five accomplishments from the previous week. Although the email was sent by the Office of Personnel Management, the federal government’s human resources arm, Mr. Musk said on Wednesday that he had suggested it and that the president had approved.Judge Chuang asked Mr. Gardner who had led the agency before Ms. Gleason was announced as acting administrator. Mr. Gardner said he had not asked, then immediately corrected himself, saying that he had asked but “was not able to get an answer” beyond that it was not Mr. Musk. The judge said he found it “very suspicious” that the government did not have an answer.The three-hour hearing was the latest in a lawsuit filed in mid-February on behalf of 26 unnamed current and former employees or contractors of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The foreign aid agency, a particular target of Mr. Musk’s, has been rapidly dismantled in the months since Mr. Trump took office. In recent days, Trump administration appointees have fired hundreds of employees who help manage responses to urgent humanitarian crises around the world, leaving the agency’s future in turmoil.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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      Several Lawsuits Target the Lack of Transparency in Elon Musk’s DOGE

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      The lack of transparency surrounding the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is emerging as a target in the courts.Elon Musk likes to talk about transparency. But a major story my colleagues published today shows how he baked secrecy into his Department of Government Efficiency from the start.When devising a plan to overhaul the federal bureaucracy, Musk and his advisers deliberately designed an organizational structure that they thought would be outside the purview of federal public records laws, my colleagues wrote:The operation would take over the U.S. Digital Service, which had been housed within the Office of Management and Budget, and would become a stand-alone entity in the executive office of the president. Mr. Musk would not be named the DOGE administrator, but rather an adviser to Mr. Trump in the White House.White House advisers, unlike employees at other departments in the executive branch, are covered under executive privilege and typically do not have to disclose their emails or records immediately.Now that secrecy is emerging as a key legal target in the courts.Several lawsuits filed in recent weeks are pushing the administration to be more transparent about Musk’s and his initiative’s activities. They argue that the administration is violating the nation’s public records laws, and in some cases they are essentially asking judges to determine that the department is an agency that’s subject to those laws.“These lawsuits are essentially saying you can’t have an agency that’s this powerful, that’s making these enormous decisions, that’s also entirely secret and cut off from the public,” said Jonathan Shaub, a law professor at the University of Kentucky who advised President Biden on matters of executive privilege.That privilege is vast, and entities like the National Security Council have successfully drawn protections from it by arguing that their officials simply advise the president, who makes the final decisions. Some legal experts think that could be a harder case to make about the Department of Government Efficiency.It could all turn on the question of how much power Musk really has — an issue that came up in a hearing in another lawsuit in Washington today — and what his department really is.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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      Stunned U.S.A.I.D. Workers Return to Clean Out Their Desks

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      Democrats said a review mandated by executive order was “not a serious effort or attempt at reform.”Workers for the U.S. Agency for International Development who had been fired or placed on leave returned to their offices on Thursday to retrieve personal belongings, many still dumbfounded by the Trump administration’s sudden dismantlement of the 63-year-old aid delivery agency.Hundreds of workers who just one month ago never imagined that they would soon lose their jobs en masse returned to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington.They were given just 15 minutes each to clear out their old desks.The somber return came a day after the Trump administration revealed in court documents that it had completed a review of all U.S. foreign aid programs and was canceling nearly 10,000 contracts and grants, eliminating about 90 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s work.The agency’s annual budget of about $40 billion pays for the distribution of food and medicine, as well as disaster relief, disease monitoring, development work, and pro-democracy and civil society programs. Its work has been heavily concentrated in poor and developing countries in Africa and Asia.Foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.Supporters offered boxes and packing supplies to help fired U.S.A.I.D. workers clean out their desks on Thursday. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesIn a joint statement, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee denounced the canceled funding, calling the foreign aid review — mandated by an executive order President Trump signed shortly after taking office last month — “not a serious effort or attempt at reform but rather a pretext to dismantle decades of U.S. investment that makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous.”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 and DOGE Escalate Layoffs of Federal Workers

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      The Trump administration moved forward on Wednesday with plans for more mass firings across the federal government, hours after President Trump reiterated his support for Elon Musk and his effort to shrink the federal government.Thousands of federal workers have already been fired in recent weeks, primarily targeting those with probationary status. The Office of Personnel Management, the agency that manages the federal work force, also said that about 75,000 workers had accepted deferred resignation offers to quit their jobs in exchange for seven months of pay and benefits.Several recent polls show more Americans disapprove of Mr. Musk’s efforts to cut the federal work force than approved, and Republican House members have been met with raucous opposition at town halls. At his first cabinet meeting, Mr. Trump made clear he fully backed Mr. Musk, asking, “Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” As nervous laughter began to ripple around the room, he continued: “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.”Russell T. Vought, the head of the White House budget office, and Charles Ezell, the acting head of the Office of Personnel Management, circulated a memo to government leaders calling for agencies to prepare plans for additional “large-scale reductions” in the federal work force in March and April.Denigrating the federal bureaucracy as “bloated” and “corrupt,” the seven-page memo called for agencies to be drastically cut — in some instances to the fullest extent allowed by the law. One line in the memo said agencies “should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated.”The memo said that plans for the next stage of the cuts should be submitted by March 13. Plans for “phase 2” of the cuts should be submitted by April 14.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’s First Cabinet Meeting Was a Display of Deference to Elon Musk

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      President Trump’s first cabinet meeting was a display of deference to Elon Musk.A couple of hours before President Trump convened his cabinet for the first time, he used his social media platform to declare that the group was “EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON.”As the meeting began, it seemed to be the members’ job to prove it.The secretaries sat largely in silence behind their paper name cards, the sort of thing you need when, powerful though you may be, you are not a household name. And they listened politely as the richest man in the world loomed over them, scolding them about the size of the deficit, sheepishly admitting to temporarily canceling an effort to prevent ebola and insisting they were all crucial to his mission.“I’d like to thank everyone for your support,” Elon Musk said.In fact, Musk has not had the support of every cabinet secretary — at least not when he tried to order their employees to account for their time over email or resign. When a reporter asked about the obvious tension, Trump kicked the question to the secretaries themselves.“Is anybody unhappy with Elon?” Trump asked. “If you are, we’ll throw him out of here. Is anybody unhappy?”Nobody was unhappy. Nervous laughter rippled around the table as Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, grinned and led a slow clap, which Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, eventually joined before scratching her nose.Next to her, Kelly Loeffler, the small business administrator, applauded and attended to an itch on her ear. Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered up a single clap and gazed over at Musk, a fixed smile on his face. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, shifted in his seat.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