Subterms
Five years ago, Covid took hold and the world transformed almost overnight. As routines and rituals evaporated, often replaced by grief, fear and isolation, many of us wondered: When will things go back to normal? Could they ever? Today, for many, the coronavirus pandemic seems far away and foggy, while for others it’s as visceral […] More
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
A federal judge on Thursday reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, declaring that President Trump’s attempt to fire her was unlawful.The ruling, which the Trump administration immediately moved to appeal, was a rebuke of Mr. Trump’s expansive view of executive power and his efforts to establish presidential control over agencies designed by Congress to be independent from the White House.Judge Beryl A. Howell, appointed to the Federal District Court in Washington by President Barack Obama, excoriated Mr. Trump’s vision of unchecked authority in her 36-page ruling, referring to a declaration he had made during the 2024 campaign that he would be a dictator on “Day 1” and to an image that the White House shared of Mr. Trump wearing the crown of a king.“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution” Judge Howell wrote.She later continued that “an American president is not a king — not even an ‘elected’ one — and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here.”Ms. Wilcox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Her ouster, in January, had the effect of paralyzing the N.L.R.B., which hears labor disputes, because it left the board with just two members — a Republican and a Democrat — and, by federal law, the board cannot act without a minimum of three members.She swiftly filed a lawsuit, one of several cases that could wind up before the Supreme Court as a test of the reaches of executive authority.In a lengthy hearing in the case on Wednesday, before the ruling, Judge Howell made a joke about the case’s possible trajectory, saying that she understood that “this court is merely a speed bump for you all to get to the Supreme Court.” More
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision comes amid calls by the president and other Republicans for more federal control of the city.On Wednesday morning in downtown Washington, D.C., Keyonna Jones stood on her artwork and remembered the time when she and six other artists were summoned by the mayor’s office to paint a mural in the middle of the night.“BLACK LIVES MATTER,” the mural read in bright yellow letters on a street running two city blocks, blaring the message at the White House sitting just across Lafayette Square. In June 2020, when Ms. Jones helped paint the mural, demonstrations were breaking out in cities nationwide in protest of George Floyd’s murder. The creation of Black Lives Matter Plaza was a statement of defiance from D.C.’s mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, who had clashed with President Trump, then in his first term, over the presence of federal troops in the streets of her city.But on Tuesday evening, the mayor announced the mural was going away.Ms. Jones said the news upset her. But, she added of the mayor in an interview, “I get where she is coming from.”The city of Washington is in an extraordinarily vulnerable place these days. Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would end D.C.’s already limited power to govern itself, stripping residents of the ability to elect a mayor and city council. Mr. Trump himself has said that he supports a federal takeover of Washington, insisting to reporters that the federal government would “run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely, flawlessly beautiful.” In recent days, the administration has been considering executive orders in pursuit of his vision for the city.Potential laws and orders aside, the administration has already fired thousands of federal workers, leaving residents throughout the city without livelihoods and, according to the city’s official estimate, potentially costing Washington around $1 billion in lost revenue over the next three years.Given all this, Ms. Bowser, a Democrat, described her decision about Black Lives Matter Plaza as a pragmatic calculation.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
Thousands of people gathered on Saturday at national parks from California to Maine to protest the Trump administration’s firing of at least 1,000 National Park Service employees last month.A group called Resistance Rangers — consisting of about 700 off-duty rangers, including some who were fired from the National Park Service — tried to organize protests at each of the country’s 433 national park sites on Saturday to stand up against what they see as threats to public lands, including the job cuts. By the afternoon, there were protests at at least 145 sites, according to Nick Graver, a 30-year-old graduate student who helped organize the demonstration at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.Protests were held in popular spots like Yosemite in Northern California, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Acadia in Maine, Yellowstone in the Northwest, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and Great Falls Park in Virginia, as well as lesser-known places like Effigy Mounds National Monument in northeastern Iowa. Tensions have been particularly high at Yosemite, where employees have unfurled upside-down American flags in protest across iconic sites like Yosemite Falls and El Capitan.Mr. Graver said his group was concerned not only about the firings but also about resource extraction on public lands and possible threats to national monuments, such as a proposal to remove the president’s power to designate national monuments.The National Park Service said it was working with protest organizers to allow people to “safely exercise their First Amendment rights,” while protecting its resources.Joshua Tree National Park in Twentynine Palms, Calif., last week.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesWe 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
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
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
More than 700 National Park Service employees have submitted resignations as part of Elon Musk’s “fork in the road” offer, according to an internal agency memo that critics of the plan said would diminish staffing ahead of the busy summer tourism season.The news of the resignations comes after a decision earlier this month at the Department of Interior to fire more than 1,000 full-time national park employees. According to the new memo sent on Tuesday and viewed by The New York Times, the additional 700 workers who agreed to the resignation plan would not be permitted to work after March 7.The staffing cuts have sparked a public outcry. Conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts and park rangers have warned that the reductions threaten to leave hundreds of national parks understaffed during the busy summer season, and already are causing some parks to reduce hours, cancel tours and close visitor centers.The national park job losses are part of a chaotic effort by President Trump to delete thousands of federal jobs. Adding to the confusion, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said the park service also plans to rehire thousands of workers — albeit as temporary, summer positions.“The National Park Service is hiring seasonal workers to continue enhancing the visitor experience as we embrace new opportunities for optimization and innovation in work force management,” Elizabeth Peace, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said in a statement.“We are focused on ensuring that every visitor has the chance to explore and connect with the incredible, iconic spaces of our national parks,” she said.Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit group, has said the temporary positions are not a substitute for the employees with years of full-time experience now lost to the park system.She also noted that about 2,000 prospective seasonal employees had their job offers rescinded when Mr. Trump, during his first days in office, imposed a hiring freeze across the government. That freeze compromised the ability to accelerate the process of rehiring those people.During the warm-weather months, as many as 325 million people visit the nation’s 63 national parks and hundreds of historic sites and other attractions managed by the park service.Federal workers received the Trump administration’s resignation offer in an email last month entitled “A Fork in the Road.” Under the offer, employees who accepted it would leave their jobs, but continue getting paid through September — and those who did not accept it risked being fired. According to the Office of Personnel Management, about 75,000 workers across the government have accepted the offer. More
A government watchdog lawyer whose dismissal by President Trump has been stalled by the courts announced on Monday that his office would seek to pause the mass firings of some probationary federal workers.The lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, who leads the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency that protects whistle-blowers, said his office had determined that the firings might violate the law.In a statement posted to the agency’s website, Mr. Dellinger said that the decision to fire probationary employees en masse “without individualized cause” appeared “contrary to a reasonable reading of the law,” and that he would ask a government review board to pause the firings for 45 days.The move marks an attempt by federal workers to use the levers of government to push back against the mass firings by the Trump administration, led by Elon Musk’s team. A spokesman for Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Dellinger’s move, which was reported earlier by Government Executive, a trade publication, also highlights the many layers of government officials who have been targeted by the Trump administration. At every level of the case, the officials reviewing the firings have themselves been dismissed and are using other legal means to fight to hold on to their jobs.The Office of Special Counsel, which was created in 1979, is not connected to the special counsels who are appointed by the Justice Department.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
