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      Federal Grant Program Opens Door to Elon Musk’s Starlink

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      The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it would overhaul a $42 billion federal grant program aimed at expanding high-speed internet to the nation, including easing some rules that could benefit Elon Musk’s satellite internet service, Starlink.The program will be revamped to “take a tech-neutral approach” in its distribution of funds to states, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in a statement. The program’s rules, which were created during the Biden administration, previously favored broadband lines made of fiber-optic cables attached to homes.“The department is ripping out the Biden administration’s pointless requirements,” Mr. Lutnick said. The Commerce Department will also remove regulatory and other barriers that slow down construction and connection to households, he added.Congress created the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program in 2021 to extend broadband to the most remote areas of the nation. The Commerce Department came up with standards and rules for states and territories applying for the funds — including the preference for fiber-optic broadband, which provides the fastest internet service speeds.Mr. Musk, who is a close adviser to President Trump and helping to lead a government efficiency initiative, is chief executive of SpaceX, the rocket company that makes Starlink. Starlink uses low-altitude satellites to beam internet service to dishes anywhere on the planet and then to devices. It serves nearly five million subscribers worldwide and was used by emergency responders late last year in North Carolina when communications networks shut down after a hurricane.The Commerce Department’s internet program has not yet disbursed any funds, and Republicans have used it as an example of a program that was slowed down by red tape.Some have accused the Biden administration of unfairly blocking Starlink from the grants and say the satellite service can immediately serve some of the most remote areas of the nation.In 2023, the Federal Communications Commission rejected Starlink’s application for almost $900 million in subsidies in a separate rural broadband program, saying the company failed to show it could meet service requirements for the funding.Brendan Carr, then a Republican F.C.C. commissioner and now chairman of the agency, opposed that decision and said the action had put the F.C.C. on a “growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses.”Mr. Musk’s business interests — which also include the electric-car maker Tesla and the social media company X — have prompted concerns about potential conflicts of interest as he makes important decisions in Washington.On Wednesday, some public interest groups expressed concern that Mr. Lutnick’s plans to change the broadband program could directly benefit Mr. Musk.“Fiber broadband is widely understood to be better than other internet options — like Starlink’s satellites — because it delivers significantly faster speeds,” said Drew Garner, a director of policy engagement for the nonprofit Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to requests for details on the plan. Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. 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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      Trump Officials Mark Hundreds of Federal Properties for Potential Sale

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      The Trump administration said on Tuesday that it could sell hundreds of federal properties around the country, including offices for the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.Officials at the General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal government’s real estate portfolio, originally said they had identified more than 440 properties that they could “dispose of” in an effort to ensure that “taxpayers no longer pay for empty and underutilized federal office space.”By Tuesday evening, however, the list of buildings deemed “not core to government operations” had been trimmed to 320 properties, removing a number of high-profile buildings, many of them in Washington, D.C.Federal Properties That Could Be Sold 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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      Inflation Is Rising. What Will That Mean for Trump’s Tariffs?

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      Consumer sentiment has turned south as high prices weigh on households. Could that crimp big pieces of the president’s economic agenda, including tariffs?Stubbornly high inflation is beginning to weigh on households, with sentiment souring fast, economists note.Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesRising prices hit a trade war President Trump isn’t backing off his tariff threats, despite the potential risk to the U.S. economy and financial markets.That puts additional focus on the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed’s favored inflation measure. It’s due for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.The question is whether lingering inflation also will have big implications for the Trump agenda, with some economists predicting that tariffs will raise inflation and lower growth, even if the target countries don’t retaliate. Friday’s report is expected to show only slight relief for consumers.Economists worry about a hot P.C.E. reading, which could push the central bank to keep borrowing costs higher well into the second half of the year, even as consumer confidence and the mood in the C-suites increasingly turn south and the economy shows signs of slowing.A recession is seen as unlikely, but there are other concerns. Recent data shows a growing affordability crunch with egg prices spiking (more on that below), home sales plummeting and jobless claims climbing. Watch next week’s jobs report for more, including which parts of the country could be hardest hit by Elon Musk-led cuts to the federal government. (Alaska is among them.)“With 3 million federal employees potentially worrying about their jobs and 6 million federal contractors worrying about their jobs, the risks are rising that households may begin to hold back purchases of cars, computers, washers, dryers, vacation travel plans, etc.,” Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, wrote in a research note on Thursday. Sentiment, he added, is “bad.”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