Trump, Donald J

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      Trump Administration Aims to Eliminate E.P.A.’s Scientific Research Arm

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      The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a “reduction in force,” being planned by the Trump administration, which is intent on shrinking the federal work force. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency’s budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites, and other parts of the agency’s mission.The E.P.A.’s plan, which was presented to White House officials on Friday for review, calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development, and purging up to 75 percent of the people who work there.The remaining staff members would be placed elsewhere within the E.P.A. “to provide increased oversight and align with administration priorities,” according to the language shared with The New York Times by staff members who work for Democrats on the House science committee.Molly Vaseliou, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A., said in a statement that the agency “is taking exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements” and stressed that changes had not been finalized.“We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water and land for all Americans,” she said, adding, “While no decisions have been made yet, we are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to increase efficiency and ensure the E.P.A. is as up to date and effective as ever.”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 Postpones Book Tour Amid Spending Bill Vote Backlash

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      Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, on Monday postponed a multicity tour to promote his forthcoming book, citing security concerns amid backlash to his decision to vote with Republicans for a stopgap spending bill to stave off a government shutdown.Mr. Schumer was scheduled to participate in promotional events in Atlanta, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, as well as a few stops in California, for his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A Warning.” Many Democratic activists, desperate for their leaders to stand up to President Trump, have been staging protests outside of Mr. Schumer’s Brooklyn home and calling for his resignation. Online, they have been organizing protests for every stop on his book tour.A spokeswoman for Mr. Schumer said that the tour was being rescheduled because of “security concerns.” But the move was immediately criticized by both the right and the left, who accused Mr. Schumer of being unwilling to face a restive public.Since voting on Friday for the stopgap bill, Mr. Schumer has been defending his decision to stave off a government shutdown, which he has said was the less devastating of two bad options that Senate Democrats were presented with. “I’ll take some of the bullets,” Mr. Schumer said of the vitriol directed at him.“There is no off-ramp,” for a government shutdown, Mr. Schumer said in an interview Friday from his office just off the Senate floor. “The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting team, the Department of Government Efficiency.Mr. Schumer said that a shutdown would have allowed Mr. Trump to decide which programs were essential, and which were not. “The day after the shutdown, they can say all of SNAP is not essential, we’re not funding it,” Mr. Schumer said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. “In a shutdown, it is solely the executive branch that determines what is essential and what is nonessential. There is no court check.”Still, the backlash has been unrelenting.Over the weekend, Mr. Schumer met with Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, in Brooklyn. The meeting was first reported by Punchbowl News. Mr. Jeffries and House Democrats, who stuck together to oppose the government funding bill in the House, have criticized Mr. Schumer’s decision. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Mr. Schumer’s decision “unacceptable.” And Mr. Jeffries has avoided expressing any confidence in Mr. Schumer’s leadership since the vote.On Friday, asked at a news conference whether it was time for new leadership in the Senate, Mr. Jeffries responded curtly.“Next question,” he said. More

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      Trump’s Trade War Will Slow Global Economic Growth, OECD Says

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      The growing trade war and rapid policy shifts are expected to drag down economic growth in the United States and around the world, according to projections released on Monday.The resilience that was evident last year is slipping, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in its latest interim economic report, which estimated that global growth would dip to 3.1 percent in 2025 and to 3 percent in 2026, from 3.2 percent last year. The United States is likely to see a sharper drop, falling to 2.2 percent this year and to 1.6 percent next year, from the 2.8 percent growth in 2024.“Some signs of weakness have emerged, driven by heightened policy uncertainty,” said Mathias Cormann, the organization’s secretary-general. “Increasing trade restrictions will contribute to higher costs both for production and consumption.”President Trump has imposed tariffs — including a sweeping 25 percent penalty on foreign steel and aluminum — on once-close allies like Canada, Mexico, the European Union, Japan and Britain, as well as on longtime rivals like China. Most have already issued countermeasures or have threatened to. Mr. Trump has vowed to impose another round of tariffs next month.One result of the tariffs is that inflation looks to be rising faster than previously thought, the O.E.C.D. said, explaining why it revised its previous estimate, published in December. Both business and consumer confidence have also ebbed.The outlook for the 20 countries that use the euro is limp. This year, growth is expected to increase 1 percent; next year, it should rise to 1.2 percent. The grimmest forecast is for Mexico, where growth is expected to decline to negative 1.3 percent this year and negative 0.6 percent in 2026.India, by contrast, is on track to record the strongest growth, according to the O.E.C.D. report, which estimates that gross domestic product, which rose last year to 6.3 percent, will increase to 6.4 percent in 2025 and 6.6 percent in 2026. China’s economy, too, looks to be in better health, with 4.8 percent growth expected in 2025 and 4.4 percent in 2026. If trade restrictions escalate, inflation could rise and economic growth could decline even more than anticipated, the organization warned.The one potential bright spot is artificial intelligence, said Álvaro Santos Pereira, the group’s chief economist. A.I. is expected “to significantly boost labor productivity growth over the next decade,” he said, with even greater gains if combined with advances in robotics. More

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      Trump Says Biden’s Pardons are ‘Void’ and ‘Vacant’ Because of Autopen

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      President Trump wrote on social media on Sunday night that he no longer considered valid the pardons his predecessor granted to members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol, and a range of other people whom Mr. Trump sees as his political enemies, because they were signed using an autopen device.There is no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon, and there is no exception to pardons signed by autopen. But Mr. Trump’s assertion, which embraced a baseless right-wing conspiracy theory about former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was a new escalation of his antidemocratic rhetoric. Implicit in his post was Mr. Trump’s belief that the nation’s laws should be whatever he decrees them to be. And it was a jolting reminder that his appetite for revenge has not been sated.“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on social media on Sunday night. “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!”The use of autopen is an ordinarily uncontroversial aspect of governance; it was first used to sign a bill into law at the direction of a president in 2011, when former President Barack Obama was traveling in Europe and wanted to sign a piece of legislation that Congress passed extending the Patriot Act another four years.After Mr. Trump posted about the autopen and the pardons Sunday night, a reporter in the traveling press pool on Air Force One asked him to elaborate, and he seemed to briefly back away from the extraordinary idea he had just posted.Would other things Mr. Biden signed as president using an autopen also be considered null and void, he was asked.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 Administration’s Cuts to Housing Nonprofits Fuel Concerns Over Discrimination

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      “Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” said Representative Maxine Waters of California. “We really are going to go backward.”Representative Maxine Waters of California and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts say they are banding together to fight the Trump administration’s recent cuts that they say will leave Americans unprotected from housing discrimination.On Monday, the two Democrats delivered a letter to Housing and Urban Development secretary Scott Turner that said cutbacks to fair housing initiatives will “embolden housing discrimination” and put “people’s lives at risk.” The letter has 108 signatures, all from Democrats in Congress.The action comes on the heels of lawsuits filed last week against HUD and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by four local fair housing organizations that are hoping to make their case class action. Under the DOGE cost-cutting plan, at least 66 local fair housing groups — whose purpose is to enforce the landmark Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in real estate — face the sudden rescission of $30 million in grants.Mr. Turner has also forecast that he will slash staff by 50 percent at the agency and by 77 percent at its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which enforces the Fair Housing Act at the federal level.“Soon there’ll be no enforcement,” Ms. Waters said in an interview. “We really are going to go backward.”Ms. Warren said that if housing discrimination is left unchecked, it will freeze more Americans out of a volatile housing market, adding that seniors, people with disabilities, Blacks and Latinos are most at risk of losing their homes in the volatile market.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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      Venezuelan Families Fear for Relatives as Trump Celebrates Deportations to El Salvador

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      Mirelis Casique last spoke to her 24-year-old son on Saturday morning while he was being held in a detention center in Laredo, Texas. He told her he was going to be deported with a group of Venezuelans, she said, but he didn’t know where they were headed.Shortly after, his name disappeared from the website of U.S. immigration authorities. She has not heard from him since.“Now he’s in an abyss with no one to rescue him,” Ms. Casique said on Sunday in an interview from her home in Venezuela.The deportation of 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador this weekend has created panic among families who fear that their relatives are among those handed over by the Trump administration to Salvadoran authorities, apparently without due process.The men were described by a spokeswoman for the White House, Karoline Leavitt, as “terrorists” belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang and “heinous monsters” who, she said, had recently been arrested, “saving countless American lives.” But several relatives of men believed to be in the group say their loved ones do not have gang ties.On Sunday, the Salvadoran government released images of the men being marched into a notorious mega-prison in handcuffs overnight, with their heads newly shaven.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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      With Deportations, Trump Steps Closer to Showdown With Judicial Branch

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      The Trump administration moved one large step closer to a constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government when airplane-loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States.The right-wing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, bragged that the 238 detainees who had been aboard the aircraft were transferred to a Salvadoran “Terrorism Confinement Center,” where they would be held for at least a year.“Oopsie … Too late,” Mr. Bukele wrote in a social media post on Sunday morning that was recirculated by the White House communications director, Steven Cheung.Around the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in another social media post, thanked Mr. Bukele for a lengthy post detailing the migrants’ incarceration.“This sure looks like contempt of court to me,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University. “You can turn around a plane if you want to.”Some details of the government’s actions remained unclear, including the exact time the planes landed. In a Sunday afternoon filing, the Trump administration said the State Department and Homeland Security Department were “promptly notified” of the judge’s written order when it was posted to the electronic docket at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. The filing implied that the government had a different legal authority for deporting the Venezuelans besides the one blocked by the judge, which could provide a basis for them to remain in El Salvador while the order is appealed.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 Clubby Washington Tradition Carries On Uncomfortably Without Trump

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      President Trump and most members of his administration steered clear of the annual Gridiron Club dinner on Saturday, where politicians and the press usually toast and lightly roast one another.The president wanted nothing to do with it.It was Saturday night in Washington, and many of the town’s top reporters, editors and television anchors were gathered in the subbasement of a Hyatt hotel. They were there for the annual white-tie dinner thrown by the Gridiron Club, an association of journalists that was formed in 1885. Ordinarily, presidents go with high-ranking members of their administration. It’s a chance for politicians and the press to toast and lightly roast one another (“singe, not burn” is the club’s motto). It is a clubby and cozy affair. This year it seemed curdled.“I invited the president, the vice president, the national security adviser and the interior secretary,” said Judy Woodruff of PBS News, who is the club’s president. “All declined.”“I was told the secretary of state would not be available,” she added.Mr. Trump’s absence — and that of any members of his inner circle — was yet the latest reminder in a long string of them that, this go-round as president, he has no intentions of wooing the Washington establishment or playing any of its games. He barely wanted to play the first time he was here, but there were some small efforts on his part back then. He did go to the Gridiron dinner in 2018, and his daughter Ivanka went as an emissary the next year.The Gridiron Club had been trying in vain for weeks to lure members of his cabinet to Saturday’s dinner. Only one showed up: Scott Turner, the secretary of housing and urban development. Margaret Brennan of CBS News joked that Mr. Turner was “whatever the opposite of designated survivor is.”Once word spread that the president and his entourage were staying away, Republicans who had initially planned to attend, like Chris LaCivita, one of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign managers, and Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff, bailed on the event. Those who did show up seemed to regret it. Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, walked out during a joke about Vice President JD Vance. One White House official who skipped the dinner privately dismissed the club and its members as exactly the kinds of elites Mr. Trump’s base sent him to Washington to destroy.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