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      Elon Musk Faces Questions About His Government Influence After Setbacks

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      A series of setbacks have raised questions about Elon Musk’s enduring influence in the White House.At the start of the new Trump administration, Elon Musk’s influence seemed to have no limits.He was in the Oval Office, one of his sons on his shoulders. He was meeting with heads of state. He was putting the United States Agency for International Development through the “wood chipper.” He gave a Fox News interview with President Trump.Over the past couple of weeks, though, Trump’s highest-profile governing partner has faced setbacks that raise questions about his enduring power and relationships in the White House.Some of my colleagues reported today that the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service was being replaced after the Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, complained that Musk had his preferred candidate installed in the role without Bessent’s blessing.It was only on Tuesday that Trump had appointed Musk’s choice, Gary Shapley, to run the agency temporarily. But since then, my colleagues reported, Bessent secured the president’s approval to send Musk’s pick packing.It’s the latest bump in the road during Musk’s three-month crash course in government. He has repeatedly rankled certain members of Trump’s cabinet by failing to coordinate with them. His overall progress with the Department of Government Efficiency has been slower than he imagined. He was practically admonished by Trump in public after a plan for him to receive a classified briefing on China was leaked and then scuttled.He suffered a high-profile political defeat after inserting himself into this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race. And despite his public opposition to Trump’s tariffs — and the trade adviser promoting them — he is not believed to have played a substantial role in persuading the president to change course.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 Temporarily Halts Mass Firings at Consumer Bureau

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      One day after the Trump administration sent layoff notices to the vast majority of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s workers, a federal judge temporarily blocked the action and ordered a hearing to determine whether the attempted mass firing violated an injunction she imposed last month.In a brief court session Friday morning, Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the Federal District Court in Washington pressed Justice Department lawyers for details about layoff notices sent Thursday to nearly 1,500 of the consumer bureau’s 1,700 workers. The messages told workers that they would lose access to their email accounts and work systems on Friday evening.Judge Jackson issued an oral order, followed by a written one, barring the government from carrying out that plan until at least April 28, when she plans to hold an evidentiary hearing on the issue. Her ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the consumer bureau’s staff union and other parties.“Once again, the court is confronted with evidence that gives rise to concerns that there will be no agency standing by the time it gets to consider the merits,” she said in her written order.Russell T. Vought, director of the White House budget office, became the consumer bureau’s acting director in early February and immediately began dismantling the agency — which cannot be closed without congressional action. Judge Jackson issued an injunction last month freezing those actions, saying that she wanted to make sure the agency existed long enough for courts to evaluate whether Mr. Vought’s actions were lawful.One week ago, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit pared back Judge Jackson’s order and said Trump officials could fire workers whom they decided — after a “particularized assessment” — were not needed to fulfill the agency’s legally mandated responsibilities.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-Allied Prosecutor Sends Letters to Medical Journals Alleging Bias

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      An interim U.S. attorney is demanding information about the selection of research articles and the role of N.I.H. Experts worry this will have a chilling effect on publications.A federal prosecutor has sent letters to at least three medical journals accusing them of political bias and asking a series of probing questions suggesting that the journals mislead readers, suppress opposing viewpoints and are inappropriately swayed by their funders.The letters were signed by Edward Martin Jr., a Republican activist serving as interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been criticized for using his office to target opponents of President Trump.Some scientists and doctors said they viewed the letters as a threat from the Trump administration that could have a chilling effect on what journals publish. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has said he wants to prosecute medical journals, accusing them of lying to the public and colluding with pharmaceutical companies.One of the letters was sent to the journal Chest, published by the American College of Chest Physicians. The New York Times obtained a copy of the letter.The Times confirmed that at least two other publishers had received nearly identically worded letters, but those publishers would not speak publicly because they feared retribution from the Trump administration.In the letter to Chest, dated Monday, Mr. Martin wrote, “It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates.”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 Blames Boasberg for Escalating Tensions Between Courts and White House

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      After attacking judges and repeatedly sidestepping their orders, the Trump administration has accused a federal judge in Washington of escalating tensions between the judicial and executive branches by seeking to hold the White House accountable for its courtroom behavior.The accusation against the judge, James E. Boasberg, came in a court filing early Friday morning by the Justice Department. In it, department lawyers asked the federal appeals court that sits over Judge Boasberg to prevent him from opening an expansive contempt inquiry into whether the White House violated an order he issued in March to stop flights of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador under the authority of a powerful wartime statute.Much of the filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia read like a normal legal brief, laying out the government’s challenge to a judicial order it did not like. But in its opening line, department lawyers made clear that they believed Judge Boasberg’s recent threat to open criminal contempt proceedings in the deportation case represented another salvo in an increasingly bitter battle between the White House and the courts.“‘Occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible,’” the department lawyers wrote, failing to mention their own role in fostering such confrontations. “The district court’s criminal contempt order instead escalates the constitutional stakes by infringing core executive prerogatives.”The Justice Department’s attempt to blame Judge Boasberg for raising the temperature came as another federal judge, in another deportation case, has opened her own high-stakes inquiry into whether the administration has violated court orders.In that case, Judge Paula Xinis announced on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland that the administration in the next two weeks would have to answer questions about why it had so far apparently failed to comply with directions from the Supreme Court to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from the same Salvadoran prison to which the Venezuelan migrants had been sent.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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      Mass Layoffs Hit Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

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      The Trump administration sent layoff notices on Thursday to a large swath of employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, just days after a federal appeals court pared back an injunction that had prevented the agency’s leaders from carrying out plans to fire nearly all of the bureau’s workers.The full scope of the cuts was not immediately clear, but by late afternoon, hundreds of workers across all of the agency’s major divisions had received reduction-in-force notices. Fired employees were told they would lose access to their email accounts and the agency’s work systems on Friday evening.A legal filing Thursday evening by the consumer bureau’s staff union estimated that the terminations could hit as many as 1,500 of the bureau’s 1,700 employees. “Entire offices, including statutorily mandated ones, have or soon will be either eliminated or reduced to a single person,” the union said in its filing to the Federal District Court in Washington.Representatives of the consumer bureau did not respond to a request for comment.The bureau, which was created by Congress in 2011, monitors banks and other lenders. Since it was established, the watchdog agency has returned $21 billion to defrauded consumers through refunds and debt cancellation, according to government figures.On Wednesday, Mark Paoletta, the agency’s chief legal officer, sent an all-staff memo laying out new priorities. The bureau will significantly reduce its enforcement and compliance examination work, and “deprioritize” oversight of student loans, medical debt, digital payments and peer-to-peer lending, he wrote.Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office leader who is also the consumer bureau’s acting director, has frozen nearly all of the agency’s activity and sought to eliminate almost all of its staff.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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      Pride and Dread in Harvard Yard as Trump Wars With the University

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      Students on Thursday protested the president’s attacks on Harvard, but at town hall meetings, defiance mixed with uncertainty as faculty members examined the toll of the White House’s actions.For four days, Harvard University’s name had been in the headlines, heroic to some, villainous to others — after the nation’s oldest institution of higher learning stood up and said no to the demands of President Trump, and then suffered his wrath.But when leaders of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health convened a town hall meeting on Thursday morning, resistance or acquiescence was not the question of the moment, nor was defiance the prevailing mood. The school’s leaders laid out their dire financial circumstances to a stunned and overwhelmed audience of about 1,000 students and faculty and staff members, near the end of a week of unprecedented federal aggression.They had no good news to share.“It’s like you’re hunkering down for the beginning of a war, where you think you’re going to be losing a lot of your freedoms and a lot of your resources,” said Steve Gortmaker, director of the school’s Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity, who attended the meeting.With Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, standing toe-to-toe with the president of the United States, faculty members and students on the Cambridge campus on Thursday said they were struggling to make sense of the rapid escalation this week of Mr. Trump’s campaign to bend the university to his will. After Mr. Garber rejected Mr. Trump’s demands, the White House moved swiftly to inflict punishment, freezing $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard on Monday, suggesting on Wednesday it would revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, and then threatening to block the university from enrolling international students.In Harvard Yard, students still hurried to class; tourists still lined up under flowering trees to take photos of a statue of John Harvard. But behind the scenes, professors and researchers acknowledged a rising tide of angst, anger and uncertainty, their pride in the university’s stand against federal intervention mingling with their dread of the painful consequences.Since Harvard University leadership stood up to the Trump administration, many were rushing to sort out what the loss of funding would really mean below the surface.Cody O’Loughlin 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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      White House Eyes Overhaul of Federal Housing Aid to the Poor

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      The White House is considering deep cuts to federal housing programs, including a sweeping overhaul of aid to low-income families, in a reconfiguration that could jeopardize millions of Americans’ continued access to rental assistance funds.The potential changes primarily concern federal housing vouchers, including those more commonly known as Section 8. The aid generally helps the poorest tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.Administration officials recently discussed cutting or canceling out the vouchers and other rental assistance programs and potentially replacing them with a more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states, according to three people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential discussions. The overhaul would be included in President Trump’s new budget, which is expected to be sent to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.The exact design and cost of the retooled program is unclear, and any such change is likely to require approval from Congress, as White House budgets on their own do not carry the force of law.But people familiar with the administration’s thinking said the overhaul under discussion would most likely amount to more than just a technical change, resulting in fewer federal dollars for low-income families on top of additional cuts planned for the rest of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.Federal voucher programs currently provide assistance to about 2.3 million low-income families, according to the government’s estimates, who enroll through their local public-housing authorities. The aid is part of a broader universe of rental assistance programs that are set to exceed $54 billion this fiscal year. But the annual demand for these subsidies is far greater than the available funds, creating a sizable wait list as rents are rising nationally.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 Names Interim U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, Bypassing Schumer

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      Senator Chuck Schumer had said he would block the permanent appointment of Jay Clayton, the president’s choice to head one of the nation’s most prestigious prosecutor’s offices.President Trump has appointed Jay Clayton, who served as the top Wall Street enforcer during Mr. Trump’s first term, to be the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the president said in a social media post on Wednesday.The action came after Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader, said he would block Mr. Trump’s nomination of Mr. Clayton, 58, for the U.S. attorney post, using a prerogative given to home-state senators. Mr. Schumer made his move after weeks in which some liberal Democrats had made scathing attacks on him for doing too little to resist Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump said in his Truth Social post that he would continue to pursue Mr. Clayton’s Senate confirmation. Mr. Clayton, a lawyer at the firm Sullivan & Cromwell who has never been a prosecutor, served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2017 to 2020.“During my first term, Jay served with great distinction as the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and earned the respect of everyone,” Mr. Trump said in the post.The Southern District, which is based in Manhattan, has long been considered one of the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s offices in the country. It is known for handling high-profile cases involving public corruption, national security, international terrorism, fraud on Wall Street and other white-collar crime and sex trafficking.The district, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx and several upstate counties, has long been referred to jokingly as the Sovereign District, a nod to its prized past independence. Its alumni have included former U.S. attorneys general, F.B.I. directors and countless judges.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