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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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      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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      Elon Musk’s DOGE Overhauls the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

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      The upheaval at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers a glimpse into the playbook that Elon Musk and other Trump allies seem to be writing in real time.At first, things at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seemed eerily calm.The Biden-appointed director of the agency, which was created after the 2009 financial crisis to regulate banks and other lenders, was not immediately fired by President Trump. The lawyers at the agency continued with their business. In late January, they said a remittance company was misleading customers about its fees and ordered it to pay a $2.5 million fine.And then the chaos began.On the morning of Feb. 1 — a Saturday — the director was dismissed, as my colleague Stacy Cowley, who has followed every twist and turn of this story, reported. By the next Friday, Feb. 7, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and a close Trump adviser, was installed as the C.F.P.B.’s acting director. Representatives from the new Department of Government Efficiency, which is led by Elon Musk and is not a formal executive-branch department, arrived and got access to the computer systems.Musk posted a message on his X account: “CFPB RIP.”Musk’s cost-cutting team has been operating with little transparency. Members don’t announce what they’re doing, who’s doing it or how. So it’s worth understanding what’s happening at the C.F.P.B., both because of the direct impact on the agency’s work and because it’s a glimpse into the playbook that Musk and his team, working with Trump officials like Vought, seem to be writing in real time.The panic strategyRussell Vought on Capitol Hill this week.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesLast Saturday, Vought ordered the nearly 1,700 people who work at the agency to stop much of their work. The edict prompted widespread fear and deep concern about the agency’s future. People worried that their work phones and computers were being tracked. One employee I spoke with, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, felt panic, and then remembered that Vought had spoken in 2023 of his intent to demoralize workers in the civil service.“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought had said.Some employees tried to plug away at their jobs. Two of them told me that after they saw Musk’s post on X about his team’s preference for working on weekends, when federal offices are closed, they decided they would do the same. On Saturday, they saw three employees from Musk’s team in the bureau’s basement, working in conference rooms with the windows papered over.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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      Senate Confirms Russell Vought as Office of Management and Budget Director

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      The Senate voted along party lines on Thursday to confirm Russell T. Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, putting in place one of the most powerful architects of President Trump’s agenda to upend the federal bureaucracy and slash spending that the administration thinks is wasteful.The 53-to-47 vote returns Mr. Vought to the White House budget office that he also led during Mr. Trump’s first term. During his tenure, he took steps to expand the number of federal employees required to work during a government shutdown, froze military aid for Ukraine and railed against spending on foreign aid.Mr. Vought emerged as one of Mr. Trump’s most contentious nominees, drawing intense backlash from Senate Democrats who described him as a lawless ideologue. They used every legislative tool at their disposal to delay his confirmation vote, commandeering the Senate floor on Wednesday night and into Thursday morning to make the case against him.“We’re going to be speaking all night,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said as his colleagues prepared to burn through the clock. “We want Americans, every hour, whether it’s 8 p.m. or 3 a.m., to hear how bad Russell Vought is and the danger he poses to them in their daily lives.”After leaving the office, Mr. Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a conservative think tank, and was an architect of Project 2025. That document was an effort by conservative groups to develop detailed ideas for policies and executive actions that Mr. Trump could pursue to tear down and rebuild executive government institutions in a way that would enhance presidential power.In speeches, Mr. Vought made clear that he relished the opportunity to overhaul the ranks of career federal workers that Mr. Trump views as part of the “deep state.”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 Picks Ed Martin, ‘Stop the Steal’ Promoter, for Management and Budget Staff Chief

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      Ed Martin, who has been chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump to be the chief of staff for his Office of Management and Budget, is an anti-abortion activist who helped to organize the “Stop the Steal” movement to overturn the 2020 election for Mr. Trump.Mr. Martin, a longtime Republican operative in Missouri, served as chief of staff to former Gov. Matt Blunt of Missouri nearly two decades ago and ran the state party 10 years ago. But it was his alignment with the anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly in the last few years of her life that amplified his national profile as a conservative hard-liner.In saying on Tuesday that he had selected Mr. Martin to serve at the O.M.B., Mr. Trump noted that Mr. Martin had co-written a book with Ms. Schlafly — published a few days after she died in September 2016 — which urged conservatives to vote for Mr. Trump.Mr. Martin has continued to promote his alignment with Ms. Schlafly through an organization he runs bearing her name, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles.Mr. Martin will work under Russell Vought, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s who ran O.M.B. for part of his first administration. Mr. Trump also on Tuesday named Representative Dan Bishop, a Republican who recently lost the attorney general race in North Carolina, as deputy director of O.M.B.The office is expected to play a crucial role within the Trump administration in helping Mr. Trump to wield power across federal agencies. Mr. Vought was one of the influential figures behind Project 2025, the blueprint that the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups have mapped for the Trump administration. Mr. Trump during the election distanced himself from the project but has since been plucking people affiliated with it to serve under him.Mr. Martin did not respond to immediate requests for comment.Mr. Martin worked with Mr. Vought on the Republican National Committee’s new policy platform, which pulled back some of the party’s hard-line language on abortion. Yet Mr. Martin has backed anti-abortion policies that include a national ban, and has expressed openness to the idea that women and doctors should be prosecuted for abortion.He also served as an organizer and financier in the “Stop the Steal” movement trying to promote efforts to overturn the 2020 election, according to the Congressional Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. In a speech outside the building a day earlier, Mr. Martin spoke of “die-hard true Americans,” and said he would work until “we have a last breath and go home to the Lord because we will stop the steal.” After that he helped usher a small right-wing organization once associated with Ms. Schlafly, America’s Future, over to retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a major promoter of election conspiracy theories. Mr. Flynn and other family members who work at the organization have turned the group into a backer of far-right conspiratorial ideology. More

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      Trump Picks Russell Vought, Key Figure in Project 2025, to Lead OMB

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday picked a key figure in Project 2025 to lead the Office of Management and Budget, elevating a longtime ally who has spent the last four years making plans to rework the American government to enhance presidential power.The would-be nominee, Russell T. Vought, would oversee the White House budget and help determine whether federal agencies comport with the president’s policies. The role requires Senate confirmation unless Mr. Trump is able to make recess appointments.The choice of Mr. Vought would bring in a strongly ideological figure who played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s first term, when he also served as budget chief. Among other things, Mr. Vought helped come up with the idea of having Mr. Trump use emergency power to circumvent Congress’s decision about how much to spend on a border wall.Mr. Vought was a leading figure in Project 2025, the effort by conservative organizations to build a governing blueprint for Mr. Trump should he take office once again. Mr. Trump tried to distance himself from the effort during his campaign, but he has put forward people with ties to the project for his administration since the election.Mr. Vought’s role in Project 2025 was to oversee executive orders and other unilateral actions that Mr. Trump could take during his first six months in office, with the goal of tearing down and rebuilding executive branch institutions in a way that would enhance presidential power.In an interview with The New York Times in 2023, Mr. Vought laid out an agenda of eliminating the independence of certain regulatory agencies that operate outside the direct control of the White House, such as the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.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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      U.S. Officials Order Better Tracking of a Political Flashpoint: America’s Diversity

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      New survey questions in federal forms will draw a more detailed portrait of racial and ethnic origins. Officials point to the benefits, but the changes could face a conservative backlash.The Biden administration ordered changes to a range of federal surveys on Thursday to gather more detailed information about the nation’s ethnic and racial makeup.The changes — the first in decades to standard questions that the government asks about race and ethnicity — would produce by far the most detailed portrait of the nation’s ancestral palette ever compiled. And a new option will be available for the first time allowing respondents to identify as part of a new category, Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.But the changes also have the potential to rankle conservatives who believe that the nation’s focus on diversity has already gone too far.An American Puzzle: Fitting Race in a BoxCensus categories for race and ethnicity have shaped how the nation sees itself. Here’s how they have changed over the last 230 years.The revisions, released after 21 months of study and public comment, apply not just to the Census Bureau, but across the government, to forms as varied as the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Health Interview Survey and applications for Social Security cards. They take effect this month, but federal agencies will be allowed years to fully implement them.Current surveys contain a separate option for people of ethnic Hispanic and Latino descent to claim that identity, followed by another question that offers multiple options for respondents to choose one or more races.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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      Biden Threatens to Veto Bill That Would Help Israel but Not Ukraine

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      President Biden accused Republicans in the House of a “cynical political maneuver” intended to kill broader legislation that would also provide money for the southern border.President Biden vowed on Monday to veto a House Republican bill that would provide $17.6 billion in aid to Israel, calling it a “cynical political maneuver” intended to hurt the chances of passage for broader legislation that would provide money for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and the U.S. border.House Republicans fiercely oppose the larger bill, which was unveiled by a small, bipartisan group of senators over the weekend. It calls for $118.3 billion in spending and would overhaul some of the nation’s immigration laws to deal with recent surges of migrants at the southern border.Speaker Mike Johnson said on Saturday that Republicans would instead offer the Israel-only funding bill instead.In its official response on Monday, the Biden administration said the president would veto the House bill if it came to his desk.“The administration strongly opposes this ploy, which does nothing to secure the border, does nothing to help the people of Ukraine defend themselves against Putin’s aggression, fails to support the security of American synagogues, mosques and vulnerable places of worship, and denies humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, the majority of whom are women and children,” the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said in a statement.Mr. Johnson called Mr. Biden’s veto threat an “act of betrayal” toward Israel.“Israel is at war, fighting for its very right to exist, while our brave men and women in uniform are in harm’s way on his orders to deter Iran,” Mr. Johnson said. “In threatening to veto aid to Israel and to our military forces, President Biden is abandoning our ally in its time of greatest need. I urge friends of Israel and opponents of Iran to call the president’s bluff and pass this clean aid package.”If neither bill passes, Mr. Biden will be forced to find a new approach to supporting Israel’s war against Hamas, the armed group in Gaza that launched a terrorist attack inside Israel on Oct. 7 that killed about 1,200 people.Israel has traditionally been one of the largest recipients of foreign aid from the United States, and support for that aid has generally been supported by majorities in both parties. More