Trump, Donald J

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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 Administration Deflects Blame for Leak at Every Turn

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      It was a hoax. The information wasn’t classified. Somehow the journalist got “sucked into” the Signal chat, either deliberately or through some kind of technical glitch.In the days since the editor in chief of The Atlantic revealed he had been inadvertently included in a group chat of top U.S. officials planning a military strike on Houthi militants in Yemen, senior members of the Trump administration have offered a series of shifting, sometimes contradictory and often implausible explanations for how the episode occurred — and why, they say, it just wasn’t that big a deal.Taken together, the statements for the most part sidestep or seek to divert attention from the fundamental fact of what happened: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used Signal, an unclassified commercial app, to share sensitive details about an imminent attack in an extraordinary breach of national security.Here’s a look at the main players and what they’ve said about what happened, and how much their reasoning matches up with what transpired.President Trump said the Atlantic’s article was a “witch hunt” and called the journalist a “total sleazebag.”President Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the fervor over the Atlantic’s article was “all a witch hunt,” suggesting that perhaps Signal was faulty, and blaming former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for not having carried out the strike on Yemen during his administration.“I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you,” he said, after complaining that “Joe Biden should have done this attack on Yemen.” The fact that he didn’t, Mr. Trump added, had “caused this world a lot of damage and a lot of problems.” While the Trump administration has criticized Mr. Biden for not being aggressive enough against the Houthis, his administration led allied nations in several attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen in 2024.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 Extends Pause on Firings of Probationary Workers for 5 Days

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      The judge said he needed more time to determine whether a longer-term halt should apply to the entire country or be restricted to certain states while the case proceeds.A federal judge in Maryland on Wednesday extended a temporary pause in the Trump administration’s efforts to fire probationary workers at more than a dozen federal agencies by five days.The judge, James K. Bredar of the Federal District Court in Maryland, said he needed more time to determine whether a longer-term halt to the government’s firing of probationary employees should apply to the entire country or be restricted to certain states while the case proceeds.Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government, arguing they were irreparably harmed when the government fired thousands of probationary employees en masse in February, leaving states to face unemployment spikes without warning. Judge Bredar’s order earlier this month called for the workers’ reinstatement.During a hearing on Wednesday, Judge Bredar said he was wary of issuing a longer halt to the government’s firings that would apply to the entire country when 31 states have decided not to participate in the case. He cited recent criticism that district courts had exceeded their authority in ordering nationwide halts to Trump administration programs. Of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, all of the attorneys general are Democrats.Lawyers for the states and Washington, D.C., say that when the administration conducts mass firings, as it did in February, the harm can spill over to other states, even if they are not joining this lawsuit. This is why a preliminary injunction needs to apply to more than just the participants, one of the lawyers, Virginia Anne Williamson with the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, said on Wednesday.For example, if a preliminary injunction were restricted to the states that brought the lawsuit, the federal government could resume firing probationary employees in Virginia, which is not part of the suit. But in the case of an employee who works in Virginia and lives in Maryland, which is a party in the lawsuit, Maryland suffers from the firings, the suit argues, because it could have to provide support services for its unemployed resident.“This is murky,” Judge Bredar said on Wednesday, adding that the court “has to wade into the swamp here and figure out if it can’t draft something more restrictive than across the country.”Judge Bredar’s reinstatement order, issued on March 13, overlaps with court-mandated reinstatements of probationary employees in two other cases.Many of the agencies have reinstated employees and issued back pay for the time between their firings and the court orders. Most agencies are placing the reinstated employees on administrative leave, which the Trump administration has told the court is part of the process of returning them to their jobs.The Department of Housing and Urban Development, however, is not providing back pay to the fired workers, said Ashaki Robinson, president of the local American Federation of Government Employees union representing workers at that agency. Ms. Robinson said that could change if Judge Bredar made back pay part of a future order. More

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      A Musk Lawsuit in Wisconsin Is the Backdrop to the State’s Supreme Court Race

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      A legal battle over Tesla sales in Wisconsin is the quiet backdrop to a big State Supreme Court race.I was driving from Eau Claire, Wis., to Minneapolis last week when I saw the sign.A Tesla sign.Soon after I crossed the St. Croix River, which divides Wisconsin and Minnesota, a brick-and-steel tower visible from Interstate 94 advertised the Tesla store and service center in Lake Elmo, Minn.The dealership’s proximity to the state line is probably no accident: Wisconsin law prohibits vehicle manufacturers from selling cars directly to customers there, the way Tesla usually does. Instead, companies need to work through local franchisees — think Hank’s Ford or Jimmy’s Subaru, that sort of thing.This means that, in Wisconsin, you can’t actually stroll into a dealership and leave with a Tesla. You can look at one — the company has showrooms in Madison and Milwaukee — but if you want one, you’ll generally have to buy it online and pick it up somewhere like Lake Elmo or Northern Illinois, or have it delivered.Tesla sued Wisconsin over this law in January. Now, Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, is spending big money on the state’s Supreme Court race.The lawsuit has become a major focus for Democrats, who are accusing Musk of trying to buy a justice and swing the very court that might at some point consider his lawsuit. My colleagues Reid Epstein, who writes about national politics, and Neal Boudette, who covers the auto industry, teamed up to explore the relationship between the lawsuit and Musk’s $20 million investment — so far — in the judicial election, which will be held on April 1.The politics of Tesla’s fight with Wisconsin are, like so much involving Musk, kind of topsy-turvy. It pits car dealers, who tend to be Republican, against Musk supporters, who these days also tend to be Republican.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 Democrats Seek Answers on Firing of Justice Dept. Official

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      After a disagreement about giving gun rights back to the actor Mel Gibson, a pardon attorney was fired. Senate Democrats are asking for details, including records or emails, that relate to the decision.Senate Democrats pressed Justice Department officials on Wednesday to explain the firing of the pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, who was dismissed amid a disagreement with her superiors about whether to restore the actor Mel Gibson’s right to own guns.Ms. Oyer was one of a number of senior career officials at the Justice Department who were abruptly ousted this month. No reason was cited for the dismissals, but Ms. Oyer told The New York Times that senior department officials pressured her to add Mr. Gibson, an outspoken supporter of President Trump, to a list of people with past convictions who could nevertheless have their gun rights returned to them.The campaign, she said, incited fears that she could be fired over it. Senior Justice Department officials have said the dispute was not the reason for her dismissal.Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, including Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi seeking answers about Ms. Oyer’s firing. Her dismissal, they added, was “particularly troubling in light of the Trump administration’s purge of public servants, seemingly based on whether they are willing to carry out the president’s agenda of political retribution against his perceived enemies.”Senate Democrats are now asking Ms. Bondi to provide an explanation for Ms. Oyer’s firing, the names of the people involved in the move and any records or emails that relate to the decision.“It is vitally important that D.O.J. attorneys be permitted to pursue justice for the United States of America and the American people,” the Democrats wrote, “not serve as the personal law firm to President Trump, handing out legal favors to his rich and famous friends.”Mr. Gibson has not been able to buy a firearm since he pleaded no contest in 2011 to misdemeanor battery against a former girlfriend.The Trump administration has decided that the Justice Department should create a path for gun rights to be restored to some people with convictions. During internal department conversations on the subject, Ms. Oyer said she was particularly worried about giving gun rights to people with domestic violence convictions.“This isn’t political,” she said. “This is a safety issue.”Last week, the department moved forward with its plan to restore gun rights to some convicts, publishing a notice in the Federal Register about the initiative. Still unclear is exactly what criteria will be used to decide who is eligible. A senior Justice Department official has suggested this is only the first of a number of steps the administration plans to make on guns, including making it easier for people to buy silencers, also known as suppressors. More

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      Federal Government Detains International Student at Tufts

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      The university was told that the student’s visa had been terminated, its president said in a late-night email to students and faculty members.An international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into federal custody on Tuesday outside an off-campus apartment building, according to the university’s president.The university was told that the student’s visa had been terminated, and administrators were “seeking to confirm whether that information is true,” the president, Sunil Kumar, wrote in an email to students, staff and faculty members Tuesday night.Mr. Kumar’s email did not name the student, but court records appeared to identify her as Rumeysa Ozturk. Late on Tuesday, according to those records, Judge Indira Talwani of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered that Ms. Ozturk, “a Turkish national detained by DHS on March 25, 2025,” not be moved out of the state without advance notice to the court in writing from the government. Judge Talwani’s order said that Ms. Ozturk had asked that a judge determine whether her detention was lawful.Ms. Ozturk’s court petition named as respondents Patricia Hyde, the acting director of the Boston field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and other ICE officials.Mr. Kumar wrote in the email that Tufts administrators had no prior knowledge of the plan to detain the student, and did not share any information with federal authorities ahead of time.“We realize that tonight’s news will be distressing to some members of our community, particularly the members of our international community,” Mr. Kumar wrote.Tufts’s main campus is in Medford, Mass., a small city seven miles northwest of Boston. The student was taken into custody in neighboring Somerville.Ms. Ozturk was listed as one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in the Tufts student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and divest itself from companies with ties to Israel.Earlier this month, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and leader of pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations who has permanent U.S. residency, was arrested by federal immigration officers in New York. Though he has not been charged with any crime, the Trump administration has argued that he should be deported to prevent the spread of antisemitism.At Tufts, the president’s email reminded students of the university’s “established protocol for responding to government agents who arrive on campus (or off-campus) for an unannounced site visit,” which encourages them to call the university police in such situations.The nearly 12,000 full-time students at Tufts include 1,900 international students from 124 countries, according to the website for the university’s International Center. More

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      Trump’s Crypto Venture Introduces a Stablecoin

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      World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company started by Donald J. Trump and his sons, announced on Tuesday that it was planning to sell a digital currency called a stablecoin, deepening the president’s financial ties to crypto as his administration relaxes enforcement of the industry.The stablecoin would be known as USD1, the company wrote in a social media post, without revealing when it would go on sale. Stablecoins, a popular form of cryptocurrency, are designed to maintain a constant value of $1, making them useful for many types of crypto transactions.“No games. No gimmicks. Just real stability,” World Liberty Financial posted on its X account.The stablecoin is the fourth digital currency that Mr. Trump and his business partners have marketed to the public over the last year. World Liberty already offers a cryptocurrency called WLFI. This month, World Liberty announced it had sold $550 million of those digital coins. A business entity linked to Mr. Trump receives a 75 percent cut of the sales.Days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump also started selling a so-called memecoin — a type of digital currency based on an online joke or a celebrity mascot. Melania Trump put her own memecoin on the market that same weekend.Mr. Trump has made aggressive forays into the crypto market as his administration eases enforcement of crypto firms and rolls back regulations. His efforts to profit from an industry he oversees amount to an enormous conflict of interest, with virtually no precedent in American history, government ethics experts have said.World Liberty’s stablecoin adds to that messy knot of business conflicts. Congress is considering legislation to regulate stablecoins that could reach Mr. Trump’s desk before the end of the year. In a speech at a crypto conference this month, Mr. Trump called for “simple, common sense rules” for stablecoins, saying they would “expand the dominance of the U.S. dollar.”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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      Read the Justice Department’s filing in the Adams case.

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      Case 1:24-cr-00556-DEH Document 175-1 Filed 03/25/25
      Page 10 of 15
      the motion is uncontested, the court should ordinarily presume that the prosecutor is acting in good
      faith and dismiss the indictment without prejudice”). But Adams’s consent-which was
      negotiated without my Office’s awareness or participation-would not guarantee a successful
      motion, given the basic flaws in the Department’s rationales. See Nederlandsche Combinatie, 428
      F. Supp. at 117 (declining to “rubber stamp” dismissal because although defendant did not appear
      to object, “the court is vested with the responsibility of protecting the interests of the public on
      whose behalf the criminal action is brought”).
      The Government “may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment” under Rule 48(a) of the
      Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. “The principal object of the ‘leave of court’ requirement is
      apparently to protect a defendant against prosecutorial harassment, e.g., charging, dismissing, and
      recharging, when the Government moves to dismiss an indictment over the defendant’s objection.”
      Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22, 30 n.15 (1977). “But the Rule has also been held to permit
      the court to deny a Government dismissal motion to which the defendant has consented if the
      motion is prompted by considerations clearly contrary to the public interest.” Id.; see also JM 9-
      2.050 (reflecting Department’s position that a “court may decline leave to dismiss if the manifest
      public interest requires it).
      “Rarely will the judiciary overrule the Executive Branch’s exercise of these prosecutorial
      decisions.” Blaszczak, 56 F.4th at 238. But courts, including the Second Circuit, will nonetheless
      inquire as to whether dismissal would be clearly contrary to the public interest. See, e.g., id. at
      238-42 (extended discussion of contrary to public interest standard and cases applying it); see also
      JM 9-2.050 (requiring “a written motion for leave to dismiss. . . explaining fully the reason for
      the request” to dismiss for cases of public interest as well as for cases involving bribery). Although
      it appears rare, at least one court in our district has rejected a dismissal under Rule 48(a) as contrary
      to the public interest, regardless of the defendant’s consent. See Nederlandsche Combinatie, 428
      F. Supp. At 116-17 (“After reviewing the entire record, the court has determined that a dismissal
      of the indictment against Mr. Massaut is not in the public interest. Therefore, the government’s
      motion to dismiss as to Mr. Massaut must be and is denied.”).
      The cases show some inconsistency concerning what courts should do if they find the
      standard for dismissal without prejudice not met. Some have instead dismissed indictments with
      prejudice. See, e.g., United States v. Madzarac, 678 F. Supp. 3d 43 (D.D.C. 2023). The better-
      reasoned view, however, is that courts considering a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss without
      prejudice must either grant or deny the motion as made-they cannot grant the dismissal, but do
      so with prejudice, unless the Government consents. See United States v. B.G.G., 53 F.4th 1353,
      1369 (11th Cir. 2022) (“[R]ule 48(a) does not give the district court the discretion to rewrite the
      government’s dismissal motion from one without prejudice to one with prejudice.”); United States
      v. Flotron, 17 Cr. 00220 (JAM), 2018 WL 940554, at *5 (D. Conn. Feb. 19, 2018) (denying
      Government’s motion to dismiss without prejudice as contrary to public interest and requiring
      Government to proceed to trial); see also In re United States, 345 F.3d 450, 453 (7th Cir. 2003)
      (suggesting that courts might condition grant of Rule 48(a) motion on Government’s consent that
      prejudice attach).
      The assigned District Judge, the Honorable Dale E. Ho, appears likely to conduct a
      searching inquiry in this case. Although Judge Ho is a recent appointee with little judicial track
      record, he has resolved the motions in this case in lengthy written opinions that included research
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