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      Federal Prosecutor Responsible for Overseeing Major Criminal Cases Resigns

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      A veteran federal prosecutor in Washington responsible for overseeing major criminal cases in one of the nation’s most important offices abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues.Denise Cheung, the head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, resigned rather than carry out a directive from the office’s Trump-appointed leadership, according to several people with knowledge of her actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.Ms. Cheung did not say what precipitated her decision in her email, but she thanked her colleagues for adhering to the highest standards of professional conduct.“This office is a special place,” she wrote. “I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution, and I have executed this duty faithfully.”Ms. Cheung, a Harvard Law School graduate, said prosecutors in the office had conducted themselves “with the utmost integrity” by “following the facts and the law and complying with our moral, ethical and legal obligations.”The resignation came less than a day after President Trump nominated Ed Martin, a right-wing activist who sat on a board that raised cash for rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and pushed for their mass reprieve, to run the office permanently.A spokesman for Mr. Martin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Decisions by Mr. Trump’s appointees have roiled the Justice Department. Last week, seven career officials, in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and at department headquarters, resigned rather than signing the dismissal of federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, saying the request by the department’s acting No. 2 official was inappropriate and undermined an appropriate investigation. More

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      Who Runs Elon Musk’s DOGE? Not Musk, the White House Says.

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      Who, exactly, runs the so-called Department of Government Efficiency?You might think it would be Elon Musk, the man who President Trump said “will lead the Department of Government Efficiency” alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, before Mr. Ramaswamy stepped away from it last month.But when Mr. Trump set up the cost-cutting body in an executive order on his first day, the order did not say who its “administrator” would be. Section 3(b) of the order reads: “There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff,” using the abbreviation for United States DOGE Service, the official name of the effort, which is not actually a cabinet-level department. Last week, White House representatives did not respond to repeated requests to identify that administrator.Then on Monday evening, a White House official stated plainly that “Mr. Musk is not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator.” The official, Joshua Fisher, made the statement in a declaration to a judge, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is hearing a case filed by Democratic attorneys general against Mr. Musk and the DOGE effort.Mr. Fisher added that Mr. Musk was “an employee in the White House Office” and “not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service.”Mr. Trump often talks about Mr. Musk as the functional leader of the DOGE effort, featuring him in a news conference last week where Mr. Musk answered questions about it.A lot of secrecy has surrounded DOGE despite Mr. Musk’s attempts to position it as “maximally transparent.” The White House’s unwillingness to state who its administrator is only adds to that sense of opacity.DOGE’s predecessor organization, the U.S. Digital Service, had administrators whose roles were public, most recently Mina Hsiang.Leaders of Mr. Musk’s effort who could conceivably be its “administrator” include Steve Davis, Mr. Musk’s right-hand man for two decades, who has overseen the day-to-day work of his efforts in Washington, and Brad Smith, an official in the first Trump administration who has been intimately involved in DOGE’s moves. A White House spokesperson did not respond to another request for comment on Monday evening in response to Mr. Fisher’s declaration.The administrator has several powers, according to the executive order. Those include helping agency heads choose their DOGE team members and starting a “Software Modernization Initiative” to update the government’s technology. A second executive order, released last week, said the DOGE administrator would receive a monthly hiring report from each federal agency and would submit a report in 240 days to Mr. Trump on the order’s implementation.It is not known who that report’s author will be. More

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      Elon Musk Zeroes In on the I.R.S.

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      The tech mogul’s cost-cutting initiative is seeking sensitive taxpayer data, drawing concerns about privacy, potential political retribution and more.Elon Musk, President Trump’s chief cost-cutter, has his sights now on the I.R.S., and Americans’ tax records.Eric Lee/The New York TimesThe fire hose of Elon Musk news continues: We’ve got more on the controversy over the access to sensitive I.R.S. data that Musk’s cost-cutting team is seeking and the resignation of a senior official at the Social Security Administration over a similar issue.And in case you missed it, there were two revealing long reads about the Murdoch family’s internal battles: one in The Times Magazine based on more than 3,000 pages of secret court transcripts, and another in The Atlantic that included intimate details directly from James Murdoch. Finally, here’s a great watch from over the weekend: Adam Sandler’s tribute on “Saturday Night Live” to Lorne Michaels, whom we profiled last year, during the show’s 50th anniversary special. Who gets access?Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team is continuing to burrow deeper into the federal bureaucracy in search of what the tech mogul says are trillions in potential cost cuts.But the organization’s latest accomplishments, including the potential gaining of access to sensitive I.R.S. and Social Security Administration data, have raised yet more concerns about how much power Musk is amassing — and what the consequences could be.The latest: The I.R.S. is preparing to give Gavin Kliger, a young software engineer working with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, access to sensitive taxpayer information as a senior adviser to the I.R.S.’s acting commissioner. The I.R.S. is still working out the terms of his assignment, but as of Sunday evening, he hadn’t yet gained access to the data.Separately, the top official of the Social Security Administration, Michelle King, resigned after Musk’s team sought access to an internal database that contains personal information about Americans.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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      Can the Federal Reserve Look Past Trump’s Tariffs?

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      Top officials are grappling with how to handle potential price increases caused by the administration’s policies.As President Trump’s efforts to restructure the global trade system with expansive tariffs begin to take shape, one question continues to dog officials at the Federal Reserve: How will these policies impact the central bank’s plans to lower interest rates?One influential Fed governor made clear on Monday that he did not expect Mr. Trump’s policies to derail the Fed’s efforts to get inflation under control, suggesting instead that fresh interest rate cuts are still in play this year.“My baseline view is that any imposition of tariffs will only modestly increase prices and in a nonpersistent manner,” Christopher J. Waller, the official, said in remarks at an event in Australia Monday evening. “So I favor looking through these effects when setting monetary policy to the best of our ability.”Economists are concerned that tariffs, which are essentially taxes on American consumers, will increase prices in the United States, at least temporarily, and over time slow economic growth.Mr. Waller acknowledged that the economic impact of the tariffs could be larger than anticipated depending on how they are structured and later put in place. But he suggested that any uptick in prices from tariffs could be blunted by other policies, which could have “positive supply effects and put downward pressure on inflation.”Mr. Waller’s views matter given that he is one of the seven officials who make up the Board of Governors and votes at every policy meeting.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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      Education Dept. Gives Schools Two Weeks to Eliminate Race-Based Programs

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      The department’s Office for Civil Rights warned that it would penalize schools that consider race in scholarships, hiring and an array of other activities.The Education Department warned schools in a letter on Friday that they risked losing federal funding if they continued to take race into account when making scholarship or hiring decisions, or so much as nodded to race in “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”The announcement gave institutions 14 days to comply. It built on a major Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that found that the use of race-conscious admissions practices at colleges and universities was unlawful. But it went far beyond the scope of that decision by informing schools that considering race at all when making staffing decisions or offering services to subsets of students would be grounds for punishment.The letter was the latest step in the Trump administration’s push to recast programs intended to level the playing field for historically underserved populations as a form of racial discrimination. It also appeared to be an extension of the broadsides President Trump has delivered to purge diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the federal government, which critics have assailed as veiled racism.Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said related programs and scholarships, many of which have historically sought to help Black and Latino students attain college degrees or find community, had come at the expense of “white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds.”“At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” Mr. Trainor wrote.“Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” he said.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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      California’s Push for Electric Trucks Sputters Under Trump

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      The state will no longer require some truckers to shift away from diesel semis but hopes that subsidies can keep dreams of pollution-free big rigs alive.President Trump’s policies could threaten many big green energy projects in the coming years, but his election has already dealt a big blow to an ambitious California effort to replace thousands of diesel-fueled trucks with battery-powered semis.The California plan, which has been closely watched by other states and countries, was meant to take a big leap forward last year, with a requirement that some of the more than 30,000 trucks that move cargo in and out of ports start using semis that don’t emit carbon dioxide.But after Mr. Trump was elected, California regulators withdrew their plan, which required a federal waiver that the new administration, which is closely aligned with the oil industry, would most likely have rejected. That leaves the state unable to force trucking businesses to clean up their fleets. It was a big setback for the state, which has long been allowed to have tailpipe emission rules that are stricter than federal standards because of California’s infamous smog.Some transportation experts said that even before Mr. Trump’s election, California’s effort had problems. The batteries that power electric trucks are too expensive. They take too long to charge. And there aren’t enough places to plug the trucks in.“It was excessively ambitious,” said Daniel Sperling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in sustainable transportation, referring to the program that made truckers buy green rigs.California officials insist that their effort is not doomed and say they will keep it alive with other rules and by providing truckers incentives to go electric.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’s USAID Cuts Halt Agent Orange Victims Program in Vietnam

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      Nearly 40 years after she was born with a malformed spine and misshapen limbs — most likely because her father was exposed to Agent Orange, the toxic chemical that the American military used during the Vietnam War — Nguyen Thi Ngoc Diem finally got some help from the United States.A project funded by U.S.A.I.D. gave her graphic design training in 2022 and helped her land a job. Even when the company closed a few months ago, she stayed hopeful: The same program for Agent Orange victims was due to deliver a new computer, or a small loan.I was the first to tell her that the support may never come; that President Trump had frozen U.S.A.I.D. funding and planned to fire nearly everyone associated with the humanitarian agency.“It makes no sense,” Ms. Diem told me, her tiny body curled into a wheelchair, below a crucifix on the wall. “Agent Orange came from the U.S. — it was used here, and that makes us victims,” she said. “A little support for people like us means a lot, but at the same time, it’s the U.S.’s responsibility.”Ms. Diem had been expecting a small U.S. loan to help her buy a more modern computer for her graphic design work.Linh Pham for The New York TimesMs. Diem uses a computer from 2011. It often freezes and shuts down unexpectedly.Linh Pham for The New York TimesWe 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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      Republicans Want Lower Taxes. The Hard Part Is Choosing What to Cut.

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      House Republicans are preparing to adopt a plan that puts a $4.5 trillion limit on the size of the tax cut, but even that will not be enough for some of President Trump’s promises.Since their party swept to power, Republicans have entertained visions of an all-inclusive tax cut — one that could permanently lower rates for individuals, shower corporations with new incentives and deliver President Trump’s sprawling suite of campaign promises.If only it were so easy.House Republicans are preparing to adopt a budget plan that puts a $4.5 trillion upper limit on the size of the tax cut. Even such a huge sum is not nearly enough for all of their ideas, and so lawmakers must now decide which policy commitments are essential and which ones they can live without.For a sense of the Republican predicament, take a look at the 2017 tax cuts. Many of the measures in that law, including a larger standard deduction and more generous child tax credit, expire at the end of the year. The overriding goal of this year’s bill is to extend the expiring provisions, which provide their largest benefits to the rich, before they end.But accomplishing just that would cost roughly $4 trillion over the next 10 years. Then there’s a coveted business tax break for research and development — which, in an example of the zigzag of tax policy in Washington, Republicans wound down in 2017 and now want to revive. That would be another $150 billion. Allowing companies to once again deduct more of the interest on their debt is another $50 billion.Those changes are the table stakes. They essentially amount to preserving the status quo. And together they would eat up all but $300 billion of the $4.5 trillion Republicans are giving themselves to cut taxes. That’s not very much money, considering the ambitions Mr. Trump and other Republicans have for the bill.The squeeze is on.“You do start running out of space to do other things,” said Andrew Lautz, a tax policy expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank.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