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      Mixed Messages on Masculinity

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      More from our inbox:Path of DisruptionA Constitutional TestA New World OrderTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Really Do Care More About Masculinity,” by Michael Tesler, John Sides and Colette Marcellin (Opinion guest essay, March 3):Without disparaging women in any way, it is essential that we appreciate the importance of male energy. When young men’s energies are channeled successfully, they launch into vital and honorable actions — fighting our wars, building nations, creating industries, taking responsibility for families and communities, generating new ideas. When those energies are left to stagnate, they find their way into criminality, meanness and self-destruction.An ideal incubator for those energies would be a period of national service, military or civilian, attending to the needs of the community and the country. This would provide opportunities that young men need in order to realize the potential of their intense energy: opportunities for practical training, for purposeful work, for leadership and camaraderie, for pride and self-worth.A national service program could provide hands for millions of tasks that our society needs done. And it could bring people together from all regions and backgrounds, to foster unity across our nation’s great diversity. It would be a great way to cultivate the immense resource of male energy.Ron MeyersNew YorkTo the Editor:Masculinity has its virtues, but its avatar these days is not Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. It is the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.Admirable men control their emotions when the occasion demands self-control. They keep their promises, even when it’s not in their self-interest to do so. They stand up for themselves when treated with disrespect, even if they might suffer consequences. They put their lives and honor on the line to care for those who are weaker and more vulnerable.We saw President Zelensky do all of these in the recent contentious White House meeting with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance. The Ukrainian president is a man of honor. In contrast, Mr. Trump displayed all the vices that traditional masculinity is prone to: bullying, childish loss of self-control, a weak reliance on others (Elon Musk’s money, Mr. Vance’s co-bullying) to prop themselves up.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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      The Democratic Divide: Would a Shutdown Have Helped or Hurt Trump?

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      When Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, announced that he would vote with Republicans to clear the way for passage of a stopgap spending bill, he argued that a government shutdown would further empower President Trump and Elon Musk to defund government programs and shrink federal agencies.“Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies, programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise that they would ever be rehired,” Mr. Schumer said on Thursday.But many Democrats, who were stunned and enraged by Mr. Schumer’s stance, argued that it was in fact the spending extension that would clear the way for Mr. Trump’s executive orders and Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to continue to reshape the government, running roughshod over Congress in the process.Behind the political divide over how best to push back against Mr. Trump was a practical question: Does the White House have more power or less when the government shuts down?It’s a complicated subject. Here’s what to know:What happens in a government shutdown?When the government shuts down, agencies continue essential work, but federal employees and contractors are not paid. Many employees are furloughed until Congress acts to extend new funding.Federal agencies typically make contingency plans that lay out who should keep working and what programs need to operate during a shutdown. But spending experts said the decisions about what is deemed “necessary” or “essential” ultimately rest with the White House Office of Management and Budget, currently run by Russell T. Vought.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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      Chuck Schumer: Trump and Musk Would Love a Shutdown. We Must Not Give Them One.

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      Over the past two months, the United States has confronted a bitter truth: The federal government has been taken over by a nihilist.President Trump has taken a blowtorch to our country and wielded chaos like a weapon. Most Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have caved to his every whim. The Grand Old Party has devolved into a crowd of Trump sycophants and MAGA radicals who seem to want to burn everything to the ground.Now, Republicans’ nihilism has brought us to a new brink of disaster: Unless Congress acts, the federal government will shut down Friday at midnight.As I have said many times, there are no winners in a government shutdown. But there are certainly victims: the most vulnerable Americans, those who rely on federal programs to feed their families, get medical care and stay financially afloat. Communities that depend on government services to function will suffer.This week Democrats offered a way out: Fund the government for another month to give appropriators more time to do their jobs. Republicans rejected this proposal.Why? Because Mr. Trump doesn’t want the appropriators to do their job. He wants full control over government spending.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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      First Test of Trump’s Power to Fire Officials Reaches Supreme Court

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      In the first case to reach the Supreme Court arising from the blitz of actions taken in the early weeks of the new administration, lawyers for President Trump asked the justices on Sunday to let him fire a government lawyer who leads a watchdog agency.The administration’s emergency application asked the court to vacate a federal trial judge’s order temporarily reinstating Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. Mr. Dellinger leads an independent agency charged with safeguarding government whistle-blowers and enforcing certain ethics laws. The position is unrelated to special counsels appointed by the Justice Department.“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” the administration’s filing said.The court is expected to act in the coming days.The filing amounts to a challenge to a foundational precedent that said Congress can limit the president’s power to fire leaders of independent agencies, a critical issue as Mr. Trump seeks to reshape the federal government through summary terminations.Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, leads an independent agency charged with safeguarding government whistle-blowers and enforcing certain ethics laws. U.S. Office of Special CounselThe statute that created the job now filled by Mr. Dellinger, who was confirmed by the Senate in 2024, provides for a five-year term and says the special counsel “may be removed by the president only for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.” But a one-sentence email to Mr. Dellinger on Feb. 7 gave no reasons for terminating him, effective immediately.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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      This Is What the Courts Can Do if Trump Defies Them

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      Are we heading toward a full-blown constitutional crisis? For the first time in decades, the country is wrestling with this question. It was provoked by members of the Trump administration, including Russell Vought, the influential director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, who have hinted or walked right up to the edge of saying outright that officials should refuse to obey a court order against certain actions of the administration. President Trump has said he would obey court orders — though on Saturday he posted on social media, “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”Some have argued that if the administration is defiant there is little the courts can do. But while the courts do not have a standing army, there are actually several escalating measures they can take to counter a defiant executive branch.The fundamental principle of the rule of law is that once the legal process, including appeals and stay applications, has reached completion, public officials must obey an order of the courts. This country’s constitutional traditions are built on, and depend upon, that understanding.A profound illustration is President Richard Nixon’s compliance with the Supreme Court decision requiring him to turn over the secret White House tape recordings he had made, even though Nixon knew that doing so would surely end his presidency.If the Trump administration ignores a court order, it would represent the start of a full-blown constitutional crisis.The courts rarely issue binding orders to the president, so these orders are not likely to be directed at President Trump personally. His executive orders and other commands are typically enforced by subordinate officials in the executive branch, and any court order — initially, it would come from the Federal District Court — would be directed at them.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 Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He’s ‘Saving His Country’

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      President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his attitude as he tests the nation’s legal and constitutional boundaries in the process of upending the federal government and punishing his perceived enemies.“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.Nonetheless, the sentiment was familiar: Mr. Trump, through his words and actions, has repeatedly suggested that surviving two assassination attempts is evidence that he has divine backing to enforce his will.He has brought a far more aggressive attitude toward his use of power to the White House in his second term than he did at the start of his first. The powers of the presidency that he returned to were bolstered by last year’s Supreme Court ruling that he is presumptively immune from prosecution for any crimes he may commit using his official powers.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 Muses About a Third Term, Over and Over Again

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      The president’s suggestion that he would seek to stay in office beyond the constitutional limit comes as he has pushed to expand executive authority.Standing inside the Capitol for the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Trump declared his plans to resurrect an idea he had in his first term: to create a national garden filled with statues of notable Americans.The choice of who would be included would be “the president’s sole opinion,” Mr. Trump said, chuckling. And he was giving himself “a 25-year period” to make the selections.A short time later, at a breakfast at a Washington hotel, Mr. Trump flicked again at the prospect that his time in office could extend beyond two four-year terms.“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression,” he said. “Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Mr. Trump spoke of giving himself a “25-year period” to choose statues for a national garden.Eric Lee/The New York TimesJust eight days after he won a second term, Mr. Trump — whose supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an effort to prevent Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory from being certified — mused about whether he could have a third presidential term, which is barred by the Constitution.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