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      Federal Judge Banishes Musk’s DOGE Aides From Treasury Dept. Systems

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      A Manhattan federal judge on Friday banned Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team from regaining access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s most sensitive payment and data systems until the conclusion of a lawsuit that claims the group’s access is unlawful.The judge overseeing the case, Jeannette A. Vargas, ruled that members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, cannot be given access to sensitive payment systems. She said she would continue the restrictions of a temporary restraining order already in place.Friday night’s order, the judge wrote, “bars the Treasury Department from granting access to any member of the DOGE team within the Treasury Department to any payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees.”The case stems from a lawsuit filed by 19 state attorneys general, led by Letitia James of New York, who sued to block the Trump administration’s policy of allowing political appointees and “special government employees” who work with Mr. Musk to access the systems. The systems contain some of the country’s most sensitive information, including Americans’ bank account and Social Security data.“Musk and DOGE are trying to wipe out vital programs and services — from health care to public safety to education — that our communities need,” Ms. James said in a statement Friday night. “I led a coalition of attorneys general to put a stop to this lawlessness, and a federal court has yet again blocked their access to our confidential information.”White House press officials did not immediately return messages seeking comment.The case, one of dozens filed in the country against the administration’s sweeping agenda, could test the ability of the courts to interpret and enforce the law when it runs counter to the goals of the executive branch.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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      Hochul May Deploy National Guard as Wildcat Strikes Hit 25 N.Y. Prisons

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      Corrections officers, without their union’s approval, refused to show up for work to protest what they say are hazardous conditions and severe staff shortages.Gov. Kathy Hochul threatened on Tuesday to use the National Guard to ensure the safety of New York’s prisons after wildcat strikes by corrections officers spread to more than half of the state’s 42 penitentiaries.The threat was a response to labor actions that began on Monday with officers assigned to two upstate prisons refusing to come to work to protest staff shortages and other conditions. By Tuesday, strikes had emerged at 25 prisons, state officials said.The officers’ union said it had not authorized the job actions, and Ms. Hochul, calling them “illegal and unlawful,” said she was considering forcing the officers back to work by invoking a state law that prohibits most public employees in New York from going out on strike.“We will not allow these individuals to jeopardize the safety of their colleagues, incarcerated people and the residents of communities surrounding our correctional facilities,” the governor said in a statement.The strikes, the first widespread work stoppage in New York’s prisons since a 16-day walkout by officers in 1979, come as the state correctional system faces close scrutiny stemming from the fatal beating of a 43-year-old inmate by officers in December.Criminal charges are likely to be announced on Thursday against at least some of the officers and other corrections department employees whom state officials have implicated in the killing of the man, Robert Brooks, at Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica.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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      Prison Boss Elevated by Hochul Was Accused of Rape by 2 Former Inmates

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      The attacks occurred years earlier when Bennie Thorpe worked at a state women’s prison, his accusers said. Now he runs a prison where an inmate was fatally beaten by guards.After guards at the Marcy Correctional Facility in central New York beat a handcuffed prisoner to death late last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul promised immediate reforms to turn the troubled prison around.One of her first directives was to install a new leader, Bennie Thorpe, who had recently run another correctional facility and had experience with security operations and rehabilitation programs. Mr. Thorpe, she said, had “expertise and a fresh perspective on what must be done.”He also had a record of being accused of rape and sexual assault by inmates at one of his former workplaces, records and interviews show.In lawsuits filed in 2023, two women who had been incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County accused Mr. Thorpe of sexual abuse when he was a captain there.One said he summoned her to an office, groped her breasts and raped her in December 2018.Another said he raped her three times in the spring of 2019 in a room near the prison’s medical unit.Neither of the allegations has been previously reported. Both lawsuits are still pending in the New York State Court of Claims.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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      Bondi Announces Lawsuit Against New York Over Immigration

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      The attorney general, citing a law allowing New Yorkers to get a driver’s license regardless of citizenship or legal status, accused the state of “prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens.”The Trump administration sued New York on Wednesday over its migrant policies, accusing state officials of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens,” as Washington ramped up its political and legal battles with states over deportations.Attorney General Pam Bondi, in her first news conference, specifically cited New York’s “green light” law, which allows people in the state to get a driver’s license regardless of citizenship or legal status.Ms. Bondi, flanked by federal agents in raid jackets, vowed to put an end to those practices.“It stops,” Ms. Bondi said. “It stops today.”The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Albany, said New York state law was the most egregious in that it requires state authorities “to promptly tip off any illegal alien when a federal immigration agency has requested his or her information.”That, the lawsuit said, was “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.”Gov. Kathy Hochul’s spokesman, Avi Small, said the governor “supports deporting violent criminals who break our laws, believes that law-abiding families should not be targets and will coordinate with federal authorities who have a judicial warrant.”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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      Hochul Halts Bill Aimed at Weakening Republican Control of House

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      Lawmakers were ready to pass a bill to delay a special election in New York State, but Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is in discussions with President Trump on congestion pricing, sidelined it.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York pressured state legislative leaders on Monday to call off a vote on a bill designed to hobble Republicans’ House majority, frustrating fellow Democrats who were prepared to approve it.Neither Ms. Hochul nor leaders of the State Senate or Assembly gave any public explanation for the 11th-hour postponement. But in private conversations, the governor told them she was seeking to gain leverage in separate negotiations with President Trump over the future of the state’s new congestion pricing program, according to two officials familiar with the matter.If lawmakers had followed through, the vote would almost certainly have antagonized Mr. Trump by giving Ms. Hochul the power to delay until November a special election to fill the House seat that will be vacated by Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, Mr. Trump’s chosen U.N. ambassador, when she is confirmed by the Senate. A monthslong vacancy would deprive House Republicans of a crucial vote as they try to muscle Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda through Congress.Republicans currently control 218 seats in the House, including Ms. Stefanik’s in New York’s North Country, to the Democrats’ 215. (Republicans are expected to pick up two more seats in Florida in special elections in April.)It was not immediately clear if Mr. Trump had expressed dissatisfaction about the bill to the governor, causing her to call off the vote on the special election timing, or if Ms. Hochul was being strategic by wanting to hold a bargaining chit in their talks about congestion pricing. A spokesman for Ms. Hochul declined to comment.The governor’s intervention threw the future of the special election proposal into doubt and risked alienating a key ally: Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat who had been aggressively lobbying the governor and state lawmakers to adopt it.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 Argues That Courts Cannot Block Musk’s Team From Treasury Systems

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      Lawyers for the Trump administration argued late Sunday that a court order blocking Elon Musk’s aides from entering the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems impinged on the president’s absolute powers over the executive branch, which they argued the courts could not usurp.The filing by the administration came in response to a lawsuit filed Friday night by 19 attorneys general, led by New York’s Letitia James, who had won a temporary pause on Saturday. The lawsuit said the Trump administration’s policy of allowing appointees and “special government employees” access to these systems, which contain sensitive information such as bank details and social security numbers, was unlawful.Members of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not actually a department, have been combing through the databases to find expenditures to cut. The lawsuit says the initiative challenges the Constitution’s separation of powers, under which Congress determines government spending.A U.S. district judge in Manhattan, Paul A. Engelmayer, on Saturday ordered any such officials who had been granted access to the systems since Jan. 20 to “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.”Judge Engelmayer said in an emergency order that the officials’ access heightened the risk of leaks and of the systems becoming more vulnerable than before to hacking. He set a hearing in the case for Friday.Federal lawyers defending Mr. Trump — as well as the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the Treasury Department — called the order “markedly overboard” and said the court should dismiss the injunction, or at least modify his order.They argued that the order violated the Constitution by ignoring the separation of powers and severing the executive branch’s right to appoint its own employees. The restriction, they wrote, “draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction” between civil servants and political appointees working in the Treasury Department.The filing followed warning shots over the weekend. Vice President JD Vance declared that the courts and judges aren’t allowed “to control the executive’s legitimate power,” although American courts have long engaged in the practice of judicial review.On Saturday, Mr. Trump called the ruling by Judge Engelmayer a “disgrace” and said that “No judge should, frankly, be allowed to make that kind of a decision.”This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Lawsuit Seeks to Block New York’s Climate Change Law Targeting Energy Companies

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      Emboldened by President Trump, West Virginia and other states are challenging a law that makes corporate polluters pay for past emissions.Twenty-two states, led by West Virginia, are suing to block a recently approved New York law that requires fossil fuel companies to pay billions of dollars a year for contributing to climate change.Under the law, called the Climate Change Superfund Act, the country’s biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions between the years 2000 and 2024 must pay a combined total of $3 billion annually for the next 25 years.The collected funds will help to repair and upgrade infrastructure in New York that is damaged or threatened by extreme weather, which is becoming more common because of emissions generated by such companies. Some projects could include the restoration of coastal wetlands, improvements to storm water drainage systems, and the installation of energy-efficient cooling systems in buildings.The measure, which was signed into law in December, is slated to go into effect in 2028.At a news conference on Thursday unveiling the legal challenge, the attorney general of West Virginia, John B. McCuskey, said the legislation overreached by seeking to hold energy companies liable in New York no matter where they are based.“This lawsuit is to ensure that these misguided policies, being forced from one state onto the entire nation, will not lead America into the doldrums of an energy crisis, allowing China, India and Russia to overtake our energy independence,” Mr. McCuskey said in a statement.West Virginia, a top producer of coal, is joined in the lawsuit by 21 other states, including major oil, gas or coal producers like Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma and North Dakota. The West Virginia Coal Association and the Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia are also among the plaintiffs.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 Constitutional Convention? Some Democrats Fear It’s Coming.

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      Some Republicans have said that a constitutional convention is overdue. Many Democratic-led states have rescinded their long-ago calls for one, and California will soon consider whether to do the same.As Republicans prepare to take control of Congress and the White House, among the many scenarios keeping Democrats up at night is an event that many Americans consider a historical relic: a constitutional convention.The 1787 gathering in Philadelphia to write the Constitution was the one and only time state representatives have convened to work on the document.But a simple line in the Constitution allows Congress to convene a rewrite session if two-thirds of state legislatures have called for one. The option has never been used, but most states have long-forgotten requests on the books that could be enough to trigger a new constitutional convention, some scholars and politicians believe.Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, will introduce legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.Mr. Wiener, who represents San Francisco, and other liberal Democrats believe there is a strong possibility of a “runaway convention.” They say that Republicans could call a convention on the premise, say, of producing an amendment requiring that the federal budget be balanced, then open the door for a free-for-all in which a multitude of other amendments are considered, including some that could restrict abortion access or civil rights.“I do not want California to inadvertently trigger a constitutional convention that ends up shredding the Constitution,” Mr. Wiener said in an interview.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