Trump Administration Live Updates: Democratic Lawmakers Join Protest Outside Shuttered U.S. Aid Agency

Many of the cuts were rolled out in secret and without warning, as representatives of Elon Musk, who was deputized by President Trump to lead a task force to reduce government spending, took over its operations despite objections from aid workers and Democrats in Congress.

Speaking to reporters in El Salvador, Mr. Rubio said that many of U.S.A.I.D.’s programs were worthwhile and would continue under the umbrella of the State Department, promising to delegate the day-to-day operations to Pete Marocco, the department’s director of foreign assistance.

In a letter to the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate committees on foreign affairs and related appropriations, Mr. Rubio said that Mr. Marocco would “begin the review and potential reorganization of U.S.A.I.D.’s activities to maximize efficiency and align operations with the national interest.”

Mr. Rubio added that the review might include “the suspension or elimination” of programs, projects, missions, bureaus, centers and offices, and that the U.S.A.I.D. “may be abolished consistent with applicable law.”

He added that the organizational change was prompted by what he described as efforts by U.S.A.I.D. officials to obscure details about their work and failure to cooperate with reasonable questions from the Trump administration.

Mr. Rubio accused U.S.A.I.D. employees of “deciding that they’re somehow a global charity separate from the national interest or taxpayer dollars.” He added, “That sort of level of insubordination makes it impossible to conduct a sort of mature and serious review.”

Mr. Rubio’s criticism of U.S.A.I.D. was still markedly softer than that of Mr. Musk, who has accused the agency of being a “criminal organization.” Early Monday morning he said that he and Mr. Trump had decided it was time to dissolve it.

“We’re shutting it down,” Mr. Musk said during a live chat on X, his social media platform, later adding in a post that “we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said U.S.A.I.D. was “run by radical lunatics” and promised to remove them.

U.S.A.I.D. employees were told overnight not to report to work on Monday because its headquarters in Washington would be closed, fueling fears that the already-hobbled agency would soon be shuttered for good.

The unusual staffwide directive was emailed out around 12:45 a.m. Eastern time, shortly after Mr. Musk’s announcement. But not all employees were able to read the note, as many had already been locked out of their accounts. Some reported being informed by text message not to come to the office.

Hundreds of contractors, who make up the bulk of the staff in field offices, lost access to their official emails and systems over the weekend, according to five people with knowledge of the changes. On Monday morning, many direct civil service hires also found that they were unable to log into their accounts, the people said.

The draconian moves caught many U.S.A.I.D. employees off guard, some said in interviews. Though Mr. Trump had made known his disdain for foreign aid, they did not expect that their agency would be fully dismantled.

On Monday, over 100 U.S.A.I.D. employees gathered in front of the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington to protest the shutdown. Many held U.S. flags and homemade signs that said things like “Democracy died in complacency.” They were joined by a group of Democratic lawmakers, who railed against the closures, blaming Mr. Musk in particular as they egged on the protesters.

“We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, told those gathered. Speaking directly to Mr. Musk, he added: “You don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does.”

Democrats have denounced the U.S.A.I.D. shutdown as an illegal maneuver because Congress created and continues to fund the agency as a distinct entity. The federal government is currently funded through March 14.

“Unilaterally closing U.S.A.I.D. is illegal,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on the floor on Monday. “Donald Trump does not have the authority to erase an independent agency created by Congress. Nor can the Department of State absorb U.S.A.I.D., especially because now there is basically nothing left to absorb.”

He also warned that if U.S.A.I.D. could be decimated at the direction of Mr. Musk’s representatives, “then you can be sure they will move on to another target tomorrow.”

Early Monday morning, employees of the agency’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance who still had active accounts were told they would be able to gain access to their offices in an annex building, according to an email from Dianna Darsney de Salcedo, the division’s deputy assistant administrator, a copy of which was viewed by The New York Times. But by the time they arrived, the front turnstiles were not working, according to three people who were either at or directly in touch with those trying to enter the office.

Two men were standing at the entrance, two of the people said, in what appeared to be an effort to block people from entering. The men eventually stepped aside, and some employees were able to go inside.

Once in the office, the few dozen employees on site scrambled to gather their belongings and those of colleagues who had not been able to enter the building, stuffing trash bags and boxes full of personal items, including photos of their children and plaques of past awards, according to three people inside the building or directly in touch with those who were.

Overseas, U.S.A.I.D. contractors were in effect left stranded, as contractors in foreign missions who had lost access to official systems — including those in conflict zones — wondered whether they would still enjoy the protection of the U.S. government, or if their travel back to the United States would be approved or reimbursed. With no official guidance, employees from Ukraine to Somalia were left to figure out how to finance their own way out.

Employees were particularly concerned about the implications of the rollbacks for the work of U.S.A.I.D.’s Gaza mission, based in Jerusalem, which is the main agency in charge of ensuring that U.S. humanitarian assistance keeps flowing to Palestinians in Gaza. The United States is a guarantor of the tenuous cease-fire struck between Israel and Hamas last month, as well as the largest single provider of assistance, the continuation of which is critical to ensure the cease-fire does not fall apart.

For others, the widespread loss of access exacerbated the panic that had already taken hold among agency employees, who have been bracing for a shutdown since representatives of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, an ad hoc task force housed on the White House grounds, entered agency headquarters last week.

Two top security officials were put on administrative leave for trying to deny those representatives access to internal systems, including a secure space where classified materials were housed. By Monday, Mr. Musk’s deputies had seized control not only of the I.T. system, but the physical security and credentialing operations as well, according to a contractor familiar with the changes.

According to the contractor, two people, Luke Farritor and Gavin Kliger, were given high-level access to U.S.A.I.D. systems. Mr. Kliger, who has a role with the White House’s Office of Personnel and Management but is said to be an engineer on Mr. Musk’s task force, was also the person behind the email directing employees not to show up to the agency’s headquarters on Monday, according to a U.S.A.I.D. employee tasked to the agency headquarters. Mr. Kliger did not respond to requests for comment.

Reporting was contributed by Theodore Schleifer, Aishvarya Kavi, Mark Mazzetti, Erica L. Green, Stephanie Nolen and Patrick Kingsley.

Mr. Ellis was a top lawyer for former Representative Devin Nunes of California when he led the House Intelligence Committee and used his position there to try to delegitimize the investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. Mr. Ellis then moved to serve as a lawyer for the National Security Agency, a position he held only briefly before the Biden administration placed him on leave.

Critics viewed his appointment then as a reward for his role in a contentious legal decision by the administration to try to stop John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, from publishing a damning book about the president. But an inspector general’s report later concluded that there was no undue pressure by the Trump administration to install him.

During the transition this time, aides to Mr. Trump initially considered Mr. Ellis for C.I.A. general counsel. But then other candidates for the deputy job at the agency — including Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, a former intelligence officer who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter-in-law — generated strong internal debate. A person briefed on the deliberations said Mr. Ellis emerged as a consensus candidate for the deputy job, pushed by both Mr. Nunes, who leads Mr. Trump’s social media company, and Mr. Ratcliffe, a former member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Ellis, a graduate of Yale Law School who appeared on “Jeopardy!” in 2013, has long earned praise for his smarts and legal talents. He has been tapped by Mr. Trump for difficult assignments before, including officially reviewing Mr. Bolton’s memoir, “The Room Where It Happened.” Mr. Ellis said it included classified material, setting the stage for the Justice Department to ask a judge to order a halt to its publication.

That attempt failed, but Mr. Trump cited those allegations last month when he issued an executive order stripping Mr. Bolton of his security clearance. Mr. Trump also stripped Mr. Bolton of his security detail.

After that review, Mr. Ellis was appointed to serve as the top lawyer at the National Security Agency, a top intelligence job, in the closing days of the first Trump administration. Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, denounced the appointment, saying it was an example of the administration trying to help its allies “burrow” into civil service jobs.

Mr. Ellis resigned in April 2021 after being put on leave in the first days of the Biden administration. While finding no wrongdoing in his hiring, the inspector general’s report affirmed reports that the agency’s director had reservations about whether he was the best choice for the job.

President Trump announced Tuesday he would appoint Joe Kent, a former Army Green Beret and C.I.A. officer, as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent twice ran unsuccessfully for Congress from Washington State, in 2022 and 2024.

President Trump appointed Sean Parnell as the chief spokesman for the Defense Department. An army veteran, Parnell won two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart during his service in Afghanistan. He ran for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania for the 2022 cycle but dropped out of the race when he lost custody of his children in a case in which he was accused of spousal and child abuse. Parnell denied the allegations.

In a series of phone calls and a private lunch on Friday at a Manhattan steakhouse with Gov. Kathy Hochul, he aggressively pushed for legislation that would give the governor far more time to call special elections for unoccupied legislative seats, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

Mr. Jeffries had one looming vacancy in particular in mind: the House seat that Representative Elise Stefanik would step down from if she is confirmed as President Trump’s U.N. ambassador.

Current law would require Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, to schedule a special election to fill the Republican-leaning seat within about three months of Ms. Stefanik’s resignation. But Democratic majorities in the State Legislature could soon grant the governor the ability to wait far longer to schedule the contest — potentially lining it up with the state’s regular June 26 primary date, or even the general election in November.

By doing so, they would deprive the Republicans’ already bare-bones House majority of a crucial vote for months as they try to fund the government and pass major tax and immigration legislation.

Republicans currently control 218 seats, including Ms. Stefanik’s in New York’s North Country, to the Democrats’ 215. (Republicans are expected to pick up two more seats in Florida in special elections in April.)

Republicans are furious, and they have set out to kill the proposal before it becomes law. In a statement, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, called the maneuver “an open display of political corruption.”

“Instead of working to address high costs, taxes or fees, the illegal immigration crisis, crime, antisemitism on college campuses or other priorities, New York Democrats are instead working feverishly to silence the voices and needs of more than 750,000 citizens in New York’s 21st Congressional District,” he said.

The discussion by state lawmakers of pushing back scheduling of special elections was disclosed by Capital Pressroom on Friday. But the involvement of Mr. Jeffries, one of the most powerful Democrats in the state, has not been previously reported.

Christie Stephenson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jeffries, did not address the leader’s involvement or political motivation when asked for comment.

She wrote in a statement that Mr. Jeffries “supports any good government initiative and legislative effort designed to expand the number of people who participate in a congressional special election.” She also pointed out that other states, like Texas and Florida, already allow their governors far more discretion when scheduling special elections.

Albany Democrats had been coalescing late last week around the idea of extending the timeline so that a special election for Ms. Stefanik’s seat would coincide with New York’s June primary. But Mr. Jeffries is still pushing for a longer timeline to keep the seat vacant as long as possible, two of the people said.

Privately, Democrats like Mr. Jeffries argue that if Republicans do not hesitate to wield their own power in the states to advance their cause, neither should Democrats. If they can hold up Republican policies they abhor in Congress, it is worth the cost.

They point to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, who has been sued repeatedly in recent years for holding open Democratic-leaning congressional and state legislative seats for months without calling a special election. He has moved comparatively quickly to fill Republican-held seats.

Democrats in New York used a similar rationale in 2021 when they tried to adopt gerrymandered congressional districts. They were slapped down by the courts. Any attempt to change the special election law could attract a similar lawsuit.

Democratic legislative leaders in Albany have yet to agree to Mr. Jeffries’s request. And as of Monday afternoon, no bill text had been introduced.

Ms. Hochul has indicated to colleagues that she wants to help Mr. Jeffries and their party in Washington, according to the people familiar with the talks, who were not authorized to discuss them.

The two met to discuss the matter on Friday over lunch near South Street Seaport with at least two other New York Democrats close to the leader, Representatives Gregory W. Meeks of Queens and Joseph Morelle of Rochester.

Mr. Morelle, who has also joined Mr. Jeffries in calls to top legislative leaders in Albany in recent days, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Mr. Meeks declined to expand on their discussions. “I’m not going to talk about it,” he told a reporter on Monday.

Ms. Hochul could indirectly benefit from the change herself. A narrower majority would theoretically force individual Republicans in Congress to take more politically painful votes to advance Mr. Trump’s agenda. Among them is Representative Mike Lawler, a Hudson Valley Republican who might run against Ms. Hochul next year.

“These are the same people that lecture everybody about protecting democracy but have no problem subverting democracy when it suits their needs,” Mr. Lawler said on Monday while in Albany, where he previously served in the State Assembly.

Speaking to reporters in the State Capitol on Monday, Ms. Hochul did not mention the outreach or its potential political impact. But she did indicate she was considering changing the law and cited other potential justifications.

Special elections that coincide with regularly scheduled elections could save counties money and boost turnout, the governor said.

Ms. Stefanik, for her part, is expected to easily win Senate approval for the U.N. post. She spent the weekend on a farewell tour of her district. But some Republicans said that the maneuvering by New York Democrats could force their party to delay her confirmation vote until other House vacancies are filled with new Republican members.

A spokesman for Ms. Stefanik did not return requests for comment.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright said his top priority was to “unleash” domestic energy production, including liquefied natural gas and nuclear power. He also told Democrats that he believed climate change was a “global challenge that we need to solve” and that he would support the development of renewable energy like wind and solar power.

At the same time, Mr. Wright said he would “work tirelessly” to support Mr. Trump’s “bold” energy agenda. The president has frequently dismissed climate change as a hoax, disparaged wind and solar power and said he wants to expand the use of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is driving climate change.

The Energy Department plays a central role in developing new energy technologies. The agency oversees a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research as well as a powerful loan office that has backed dozens of low-carbon energy projects, including battery factories in Ohio and Tennessee and two giant nuclear reactors in Georgia.

Mr. Wright would also oversee approvals of liquefied gas export terminals, which the Biden administration tried to slow, angering industry groups. Mr. Trump has already ordered the Energy Department to restart reviews of proposed export facilities.

The Energy Department is a sprawling agency. About 80 percent of the department’s $52 billion annual budget goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting research in areas like high-energy physics.

Under the Biden administration, the department aggressively supported new clean energy technologies such as advanced nuclear power, enhanced geothermal energy, green hydrogen fuels, next-generation batteries and more. Backed by new funding from Congress, it issued tens of billions in loans and grants to everything from firms making low-carbon cement to power companies building new transmission lines.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Wright mostly declined to go into details about how he would run the department.

Some conservative groups have urged Mr. Wright to reorient or even shutter the agency’s Loan Programs Office, which was given roughly $400 billion in loan authority by Congress to bring promising energy technologies to market. Under the Biden administration, the office finalized more than $60.6 billion in loans and loan guarantees to companies that were mining lithium, restarting a shuttered nuclear plant, converting wind and solar power into hydrogen fuels and more. It also issued $47 billion in conditional loans that have not been finalized.

As of Jan. 17, there were still 160 companies seeking more than $200 billion in loans and loan guarantees. But the loan office’s work has largely been paused since Mr. Trump took office, and it is unclear what will happen to those applications.

Most major environmental groups and many Democrats opposed Mr. Wright’s confirmation, saying that he downplayed the risks of a warming planet. In a social media post in 2023, Mr. Wright wrote, “There is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition, either.” On a podcast last year, he said that climate change would have “a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now.”

On podcasts and in speeches, Mr. Wright has frequently made a moral case for fossil fuels, arguing that the world’s poorest people need access to oil, gas and coal to enjoy the benefits of modern life that rich nations take for granted.

Still, some Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to approve Mr. Wright’s nomination. They included Ruben Gallego of Arizona, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, as well as Angus King, an independent from Maine who normally caucuses with Democrats.

“While I do not agree with Mr. Wright on a number of issues, he has committed to working with us in good faith” on issues like investing in national labs and building out high-voltage power lines, Mr. Heinrich said last month.

Mr. Wright graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software to measure the motion of fluid beneath the Earth’s surface. The software helped bring about a commercial shale-gas revolution.

Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has worked with others on geothermal energy and small, modular nuclear reactors.

Mr. Wright holds 2.6 million shares in the company, which were worth roughly $47 million based on Monday’s closing stock price. In a written statement to the Senate he promised to step down from Liberty Energy and divest his holdings within 90 days after being confirmed. According to his ethics agreement, he is scheduled to get paid his last bonus from the company in March.

Lisa Friedman contributed reporting.

“I have the right to do that, and we might put that in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make, or if we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options, but we could put that as an example in the fund,” Mr. Trump said of buying TikTok.

The three-paragraph executive order tasks the Treasury and Commerce Departments with generating a plan within 90 days for creating a such a fund. Sovereign wealth funds are popular in oil-rich countries like Norway and Saudi Arabia that can invest large budget surpluses in projects around the world.

But the United States runs persistent, and widening, budget deficits, and it is unclear where the Trump administration could find the money to seed such a fund. Howard Lutnick, Mr. Trump’s pick to lead the Commerce Department, suggested that the government could take a stake in companies it does business with.

“If we are going to buy two billion Covid vaccines, maybe we should have some warrants and some equity in these companies and have that grow for the help of the American people,” he said, standing beside Mr. Trump at the White House.

Mr. Trump discussed the idea during the presidential campaign, floating the possibility that money collected from imposing new tariffs could be invested in projects around the country. The Biden administration had also studied the possibility of creating a fund to make investments in specific strategic industries.

Standing up a national investment fund would require resolving a series of questions about how the government money is controlled and which projects or companies receive it. The executive order tasks administration officials with figuring out whether Congress would need to pass new legislation in order to create such a fund.

If the Trump administration ultimately moves forward with creating a sovereign wealth fund, it would be the latest step to expand the federal government’s role in the American economy. Under both Mr. Trump and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., officials in Washington have been much more proactive in supporting American companies, often at the expense of foreign competitors, ending a decades-long embrace of free trade and open investment among American officials.

Mr. Trump said during his remarks that he would like the American wealth fund to be among the largest in the world, many of which exceed $1 trillion.

“And I think in a short period of time, we’d have one of the biggest funds. And you know, some of some of them are pretty large,” Mr. Trump said. “So, that’s a big deal, huh?”

Directing his comments at Mr. Musk, who early Monday said that he and Mr. Trump had decided it was time to dissolve the agency, Mr. Raskin added: “You don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does.”

The impromptu protest underscored the heightened tension that has permeated the agency for more than a week, as the Trump administration suspended senior officials, barred civil servants and contractors from accessing U.S.A.I.D. systems, and ordered employees who worked out of the agency’s headquarters to stay away on Monday because it would be closed. In the latest change, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said Monday that he had taken over as the agency’s acting administrator, though he later delegated the day-to-day running of it to Pete Marocco, the State Department’s director of foreign assistance.

While many employees stayed home, those who work at an annex office about a mile away showed up there, confused whether the directive applied to them. Some employees were permitted entry, but they were soon seen leaving carrying tote bags laden with cleared-out belongings as they shuffled to cars idling in the street.

Ever since Friday, when reports surfaced that President Trump was planning to issue an executive order dismantling the aid agency and moving its work to the State Department, aid workers and Democratic lawmakers had been gripped by dread and anxiety, saying they feared increasing backlash from his administration.

On Monday, the day after Mr. Trump called U.S.A.I.D. workers “raging lunatics,” a few employees were sobbing on the sidewalk as they spoke about the diminished future of the agency and their own careers.

Mr. Raskin was joined Monday by Democratic lawmakers who gathered to condemn the agency shake-up, a group that included Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee that oversees U.S.A.I.D., and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a refugee of Somalia’s civil war, who said she had benefited personally from the agency’s existence.

Ms. Omar told the crowd that U.S.A.I.D. provided “essential programs” that kept her family safe during the four years she spent living in a refugee camp in Kenya before seeking asylum in the United States in 1995. She called the Trump administration’s actions “embarrassing” to the country’s international reputation.

“What kind of country are we becoming?” she asked.

Several Democratic lawmakers attempted to enter U.S.A.I.D.’s headquarters in defiance of the decision to close it on Monday, but they did not make it past the building’s lobby. They told reporters they were denied entry under Mr. Musk’s order to keep the offices closed.

Three of the lawmakers who joined the protests Monday — Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Raskin — all represent the Washington suburbs, where hundreds of thousands of federal workers live. They promised to support any workers that face termination, noting that the administration had also fired F.B.I. and State Department officials.

But their legislative options to save the agency in its current form are limited without support from Republicans in Congress. Mr. Van Hollen said the battle would most likely play out in the courts, with Democrats working to get an injunction to block the order that was keeping workers out of the office.

Earlier on Monday, Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said he intended to block Mr. Trump’s State Department nominees until the administration stopped its attacks on U.S.A.I.D., taking advantage of Senate rules that enable one senator to hold up nominations.

The bureau has received about $150 million to $200 million of annual budget funding from Congress in recent years. But the bureau also handles and passes on money that Congress appropriates for other groups, including the National Endowment for Democracy.

Besides the contractors, the bureau has about 200 full-time staff employees. They mainly work out of Washington, where the programs are run from the State Department’s headquarters.

The bureau’s programs have often been focused on building up civil society and democratic practices in countries where the United States does not have missions and formal diplomatic ties, or where relations with an authoritarian government are especially tense. This includes Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba.

President Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 that has suspended any money or programs that can be deemed to be foreign aid or assistance.

Some of the bureau’s contractors have specific technical expertise. For example, at least one is an expert on virtual private networks, software that allows users to get around government internet blocks. China has the most effective internet censorship program in the world, called the Great Firewall.

The bureau has also worked on enacting policies aimed at pressuring China to relent on its forced labor of Uyghur Muslims, including the imposing of sanctions on U.S. companies that buy products that can be traced back to some form of forced labor.

Some Republican politicians have criticized the bureau in recent years, saying its democracy-promotion programs often end up supporting political parties or groups abroad that are opposed to conservative or far-right political figures in those countries.

However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long been a champion of policies that advance human rights and promote democratic practices. In the Senate, where he represented Florida, Mr. Rubio was a lead sponsor of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which had broad support from both parties in Congress. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. signed it into law in December 2021.

The State Department had no immediate comment when asked about the firings.

Foreign leaders who have criticized the bureau include Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who has tried to suppress democratic practices in his country over many years. Mr. Orban is a favorite politician of conservative and far-right groups and politicians in the United States. Last December, he met with Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, the billionaire technology businessman who advises the president, at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home in Florida.

The firing of the contractors is similar to the drastic steps taken in recent days by the Trump administration, and by Mr. Musk in particular, to sharply reduce the work force of the United States Agency for International Development. Last week, the administration placed 60 senior officials from the agency on paid leave and issued orders that led to the firing of hundreds of contractors. Since then, administration officials have fired dozens more employees or put them on paid leave.

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

Democratic lawmakers echoed those concerns, saying the new administration was exacting revenge on critical law enforcement agencies. Republicans, by contrast, were conspicuously quiet on the subject.

The letter, from the F.B.I. Agents Association, said that the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, instructed the acting F.B.I. director, Brian Driscoll, last Friday “to terminate the F.B.I.’s entire leadership team,” as well as the head of the bureau’s Washington field office.

More than a half-dozen senior F.B.I. officials were forced out, though some chose to retire, according to people familiar with the decisions who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe personnel moves.

Mr. Bove also instructed the F.B.I. to compile a list of all agents who worked on cases related to Jan. 6 — a list expected to include roughly 6,000 agents, analysts and support staff. People familiar with the internal deliberations have said Trump administration officials have discussed firing hundreds of such agents.

The letter warned of far-ranging consequences should any purge come to pass.

“These actions, which lack transparency and due process, are creating dangerous distractions, imperiling ongoing investigations, and undermining the bureau’s ability to work with state, local and international partners to make America safe again,” it read.

The group’s letter was also signed by William Webster, a former F.B.I. director; Michael Clark, the president of the Society of Former Special Agents of the F.B.I.; and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

“We urge you to work with President Trump to prevent acting officials from taking personnel actions that undermine our shared goal of keeping the F.B.I. out of politics,” the letter said.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee also weighed in. In letters addressed to Mr. Trump’s appointees, including his choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, and his picks for F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, the lawmakers called an opening volley of ousters, reassignments and forced transfers of key personnel at the Justice Department “outrageous and unacceptable.”

Ms. Bondi’s and Mr. Patel’s nominations still await a Senate floor vote, but there have been no signs yet of any cracks in the Republican majority needed to confirm them for those positions.

“Our alarm has only grown in the past two weeks as this purge of experienced career prosecutors and agents has expanded,” the Democrats wrote.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

“Under this proclamation, there’s no longer asylum, period,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. leading the challenge. “Countless people, including families with small children, will be returned to danger, maybe to their death. Plain and simple, this is a power grab at the expense of Congress.”

Asked to comment on the lawsuit, a White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said: “President Trump was given a resounding mandate to end the disregard and abuse of our immigration laws and secure our borders. The Trump administration will continue to put Americans and America First.”

During the first Trump administration, U.S. officials tried several times to restrict the asylum system. Some of those efforts were struck down by the courts.

The challenge filed on Monday is the latest attempt to overturn one of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies in court. A federal judge in Seattle has already temporarily blocked a different order by Mr. Trump that sought to restrict birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed in the Constitution.

The lawsuit filed on Monday argues that Mr. Trump’s order has led to the quick deportation of migrants, denying them any meaningful access to asylum in violation of U.S. law.

“Asylum seekers are also being systematically expelled from the United States without being provided credible fear interviews — the absolute minimum that Congress required to ensure that people subjected to expedited removal would not be returned to persecution or torture,” the lawsuit asserts, referring to asylum screenings at the border.

Lawsuits against Mr. Trump’s first administration blocked several of his more contentious policies, including an effort to limit asylum protections in 2018.

“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” a federal judge in San Francisco, Jon S. Tigar, wrote in his order blocking that policy in November 2018.

Former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also limited asylum for migrants who crossed the border illegally last year. His order, however, allowed for migrants to have full access to the system if they entered through a port of entry or other pathways Mr. Trump has either closed or frozen in the weeks since his inauguration last month.

“We’re going to keep all our safety positions in place,” he said. “No early retirement.”

One of the resignation offers, which would allow workers to be placed on paid administrative leave until the end of September, arrived just 24 hours after a passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided on Wednesday, killing 67 people near Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport. The offers, which the Office of Personnel Management made via email on Jan. 28 and Jan. 30, rattled F.A.A. workers, many of whom were still reeling from the worst aviation accident in recent U.S. history.

Staffing in the critical area of air traffic control has been chronically low for years and may have played a role in the collision. Yet some air traffic controllers, who believe they have long been overworked, are considering resigning, according to two controllers who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The F.A.A. and the Department of Transportation did not respond to questions on Monday as to how they would reverse the resignation offers, which were issued to a broad spectrum of federal workers.

But a notice from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union that represents controllers, appeared to back up Mr. Duffy’s assertions.

The notice, which was distributed on Sunday and seen by The New York Times, pointed to guidance issued Jan. 28 — part of which was directed to agency heads and part of which provided more detailed directions to agency human-resources managers — stating that agencies had the right to exempt certain workers from what it called the “deferred resignation” program.

Deferred resignations, stated the memo, would be unavailable to military personnel, postal workers, and employees working in immigration enforcement and national security, as well as “any other positions specifically excluded by your employing agency.”

Mr. Duffy said on CNN that “all our safety positions” — which he had said a moment earlier included air traffic controllers and inspectors — would be exempted from “early retirement.”

In its notice to members, NATCA recommended workers “do not submit a deferred resignation letter until we receive additional information on how it would affect your retirement, benefits, and what positions are excluded.” The union added that it had asked for an F.A.A. briefing on those questions.

A spokesman for NATCA confirmed the email but declined to elaborate on whether the union had learned additional details about the resignation push.

Emily Steel contributed reporting.

Ukraine is rich in rare earth minerals such as lithium, uranium and titanium, which are crucial for manufacturing a broad range of modern products including electric car motors and wind turbines.

Mr. Trump’s offer comes as his new government has halted foreign development aid worldwide, forcing many humanitarian organizations in Ukraine to suspend operations and leaving the Ukrainian government scrambling to secure alternative financing for critical programs, including support for its battered energy grid and war veterans.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said U.S. military assistance provided by the Biden administration had not been affected by the recent freeze on foreign aid. But Mr. Trump has long voiced reluctance to continue sending billions of dollars in weapons and other equipment to the beleaguered nation, arguing that it costs the U.S. too much.

In many ways, Mr. Trump’s offer to trade aid for rare earth minerals aligns with the transactional foreign policy strategy he has pursued since returning to office. He has been leveraging the U.S.’s economic power to pressure allies, including Colombia and Mexico, into agreeing to, or at least negotiating on, his demands.

By expressing interest in Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, Mr. Trump is also picking up on an offer that originally came from Mr. Zelensky himself. In recent months, as the Ukrainian president looked for ways to appeal to the incoming Trump administration, he has emphasized that helping defend Ukraine is in America’s economic interest since his country is rich in critical minerals that could boost U.S. industries.

Reacting to Mr. Trump’s statement, a top Ukrainian official said Monday night that Ukraine is ready to work with the U.S. on rare earth mineral deals, provided the U.S. offers sufficient security guarantees to prevent these resources from falling into Russian hands. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Ukrainian authorities say the country holds deposits of more than 20 critical rare earth minerals, with some consulting and equity firms valuing them at several trillion dollars. But experts caution that the true value is hard to estimate as many reserves remain inaccessible, in part because of the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine.

Ukraine had planned to sign an agreement with the Biden administration late last year to cooperate on extracting and processing minerals. But the Ukrainian authorities postponed the signing of such a deal, in what officials on both sides said was a signal that Kyiv was waiting for Mr. Trump to take office to strike an agreement with him.

In December, a Ukrainian government delegation met with U.S. businessmen in Washington, presenting potential business deals that included acquiring production licenses for critical minerals, either directly or through partnerships with existing license holders, according to a government presentation seen by The New York Times.

But how quickly and effectively Ukraine can finalize these deals remains uncertain. At a conference in Kyiv last week, Ukrainian business leaders and lawmakers stressed that much exploration remains to be done to assess the true value of the country’s critical minerals. And administrative and legislative obstacles still hinder foreign investment in the sector.

What’s more, Russia’s advances on the battlefield have allowed Moscow’s troops to seize significant reserves of rare earth minerals in Ukraine, and they are rapidly approaching other reserves. Russian forces are currently less than seven miles from a major lithium reserve in Ukraine’s southeastern Donetsk region.