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      Trump Administration Pushes Back Against Judge’s Orders on Deportations

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      The Trump administration has asked a federal judge to dissolve the orders he put in place this weekend barring it from deporting suspected members of a Venezuelan street gang from the country under a rarely invoked wartime statute called the Alien Enemies Act.The Justice Department also doubled down on its efforts to avoid giving the judge, James E. Boasberg, the detailed information he had requested about the deportations, asking the federal appeals court that sits over him to intervene and put the case on hold.Taken together, the twin moves — made in separate sets of court papers filed late on Monday — marked a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s aggressive attempts to push back against Judge Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, who temporarily halted one of President Trump’s signature deportation policies.The Justice Department has now effectively opened up two fronts in the battle: one challenging the underlying orders that paused, for now, the deportation flights and another seeking to avoid disclosing any information about the flights that could indicate they took place after the judge’s orders stopping them were imposed.Mr. Trump attacked Judge Boasberg in a social media post on Tuesday morning, albeit without naming him, as “a troublemaker and agitator,” and called for his impeachment. Mr. Trump’s remarks came days after he declared during a speech at the Justice Department that criticizing judges should be illegal.The late night filings and Mr. Trump’s verbal assault followed a day of extraordinary tension between the Trump administration and Judge Boasberg, both inside and outside the courtroom.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 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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      Timeline of Trump’s Deportation Flights, From Alien Enemies Act to Judge’s Order

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      The federal judge’s ruling was clear: The Trump administration could not use an obscure wartime law from the 18th century to deport people without a hearing.If any planes were already in the air, the judge said, they should turn back.That did not happen. Instead, the Trump administration sent more than 200 migrants to El Salvador over the weekend, including alleged gang members, on three planes.A New York Times review of the flight data showed that none of the planes in question landed in El Salvador before the judge’s order, and that one of them did not even leave American soil until after the judge’s written order was posted online. During a Monday court hearing, a Justice Department lawyer argued that the White House had not defied the order by the judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington. The lawyer, Abhishek Kambli, argued that the judge’s decision was not complete until it was codified in written form. And — crucial to the government’s explanation — the written version did not include the specific instruction to turn planes around. Mr. Kambli also argued that while the third plane contained deportees, their cases were not covered by the judge’s order. More

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      E.P.A. Offers No New Evidence in Battle Over $20 Billion in Climate Grants

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      Nonprofit groups have sued the agency to get access to grants approved by Congress to fund climate and clean energy projects across the country.In a legal filing Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency did not provide direct evidence of waste, fraud, or abuse in a $20 billion climate grant program that the agency canceled citing “unacceptable risk.”For weeks, the grant program has been mired in controversy, with its funds frozen, as the E.P.A. attempted to claw back money that was approved by Congress for clean energy programs. At least three of the grant recipients have filed lawsuits seeking access to the funds they were promised.Last week, a federal judge ordered the E.P.A. to justify its moves to freeze the funds and cancel the program. The motion stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Climate United, a nonprofit group that was supposed to receive $7 billion under the initiative.But in response to the judge’s order on Monday, the E.P.A. did not present new direct evidence. Instead, it referred to unidentified media reports as well as a video released last year by Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents.The video, filmed in a social setting, showed an E.P.A. staff member at the time, talking about the outgoing Biden administration’s efforts to quickly spend federal money. He compared it to throwing “gold bars” off the Titanic. A lawyer for the former staff member has since said he was not referring to the $20 billion grant program.But Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, has seized on the video and has repeatedly suggested the grants were vulnerable to fraud. At the request of the Trump administration, the $20 billion allocated to eight nonprofit groups have been frozen in accounts held at Citibank.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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      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

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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