Trump Administration Live Updates: News on Elon Musk, Russia Peace Talks and RFK Jr.

“The court is aware that DOGE’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion for plaintiffs and many of their agencies and residents,” Judge Chutkan wrote, referring to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is tasked with carrying out Mr. Musk’s vision. But the mere possibility that “defendants may take actions that irreparably harm plaintiffs” was not enough to grant emergency relief, she said.

Judge Chutkan nonetheless appeared to suggest that the lawsuit had a strong chance of succeeding with the benefit of additional evidence, which could be introduced later as litigation continues.

“Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight,” she wrote.

The ruling by Judge Chutkan reflected the atmosphere of confusion surrounding the purpose and goals of Mr. Musk’s team, which judges in a number of court cases have repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked government lawyers to clarify.

It also reflected what Judge Chutkan described as the considerable uncertainty about what future cuts and layoffs could result from Mr. Musk’s effort to shrink the federal work force, which has resulted in the termination of hundreds of federal contracts and thousands of workers in recent weeks.

“The court can’t act based on media reports,” she said in a hearing on Monday. “We can’t do that.”

The coalition of 14 states had argued in the case that Mr. Musk was essentially informing his process on the fly, steering decisions about how to reshape federal agencies based on the data his team was actively extracting.

“The way in which DOGE and Mr. Musk have identified how to make cuts is through use and analysis of the agency data,” Anjana Samant, a deputy counsel at the New Mexico Department of Justice, said on Monday. “I don’t see how defendants can dispute that.”

The states had sought a temporary restraining order to prevent Elon Musk or anyone on his efficiency team from combing through data at seven agencies: the Office of Personnel Management and the Education, Labor, Health and Human Services, Energy, Transportation and Commerce Departments. It also sought to prevent Mr. Musk’s operatives from “terminating, furloughing, or otherwise placing on involuntary leave” any employees who work at those agencies.

The Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a department but a small team housed within the executive office of the president, regularly spotlights obscure grants and contracts on its website as examples of runaway spending that President Trump has given a greenlight to slash. But in the process, it has also pushed billions of dollars in cuts without explanation, and spurred personnel changes, including the firing or suspension of thousands of workers.

The coalition of states suing described the effect of those cuts in a motion as “a classic pocketbook injury,” given the federal funding states could lose as Mr. Musk’s team continues to make changes.

In the hearing on Monday, Judge Chutkan appeared to doubt whether it was possible to determine how that impact could be measured, absent clearer evidence about what the Musk team is doing.

She pressed Ms. Samant to identify cases of “imminent harm,” asking for specific examples of critical programs that the Musk team may have already targeted like a “wrecking ball,” which would justify such a sweeping emergency injunction.

Ms. Samant pointed specifically to reporting last week that the Education Department had moved to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that fund education research that teachers and academics in New Mexico and other plaintiff states depend on. She also pointed to the impact of staff reductions at the Energy Department last week, which she said put residents of her state in danger, given the nuclear waste disposal facilities that the department oversees there.

While several judges have already considered more limited restraining orders halting Musk team operations within individual agencies, the case before Judge Chutkan is unique in its focus on the Constitution’s appointments clause, which specifies which officials can be appointed by the executive branch without the consent of the Senate. The states argued in their lawsuit that Mr. Trump had violated the clause by granting broad powers to Mr. Musk.

On Monday, Ms. Samant stressed that the lawsuit was squarely focused on Mr. Musk and the sweeping authority he had claimed over federal agency heads, not any changes that agencies decide to make on their own.

“Mr. Musk is not a principal officer of the United States within the meaning of the appointments clause of the Constitution; he occupies a role the president made up, not one Congress created,” the attorneys general wrote in a motion.

The suit was filed by the attorneys general in New Mexico, Arizona, Michigan, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Vermont.

Attorneys for the government on Monday disputed the notion that Mr. Musk had been given any extraordinary control or had personally influenced any decisions.

They sought to reinforce that claim with a declaration from Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House’s Office of Administration, filed on Monday. Although Mr. Musk has taken a leading role in the federal downsizing efforts, Mr. Fisher stated that he has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions” and is not the legal head of the Department of Government Efficiency.

Justice Department attorneys also argued that some of the states who joined the lawsuit had failed to show that they had been harmed by anything Mr. Musk had done so far.

“An appointment clause claim is entirely about somebody occupying an office and using the trappings of that office to wield sovereign power,” Harry Graver, an attorney for the Justice Department, said. “Nowhere have my friends offered a shred of anything, nor could they, to show that Elon Musk has any formal or actual authority to make any government decision himself.”

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As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it. To listen to Mr. Trump talk with reporters on Tuesday about the conflict was to hear a version of reality that would be unrecognizable on the ground in Ukraine and certainly would never have been heard from any other American president of either party.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. “You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he went on: “You have a leadership now that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened.” By contrast, Mr. Trump uttered not one word of reproach for Mr. Putin or for Russia, which first invaded Ukraine in 2014, waged a low-intensity war against it through all four years of Mr. Trump’s first term and then invaded it in 2022 aiming to take over the whole country.

Mr. Trump is in the middle of executing one of the most jaw-dropping pivots in American foreign policy in generations, a 180-degree turn that will force friends and foes to recalibrate in fundamental ways. Ever since the end of World War II, a long parade of American presidents saw first the Soviet Union and then, after a brief and illusory interregnum, its successor Russia as a force to be wary of, at the very least. Mr. Trump gives every appearance of viewing it as a collaborator in future joint ventures.

He makes clear that the United States is done isolating Mr. Putin for his unprovoked aggression against a weaker neighbor and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Instead, Mr. Trump, who has always had a perplexing fondness for Mr. Putin, wants to readmit Russia to the international club and make it one of America’s top friends.

“It’s a disgraceful reversal of 80 years of American foreign policy,” said Kori Schake, who is the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and was a national security aide to President George W. Bush.

“Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. refused to legitimate Soviet conquest of the Baltic States, and it gave heart to people fighting for their freedom,” she continued. “Now we’re legitimating aggression to create spheres of influence. Every American president of the last 80 years would oppose President Trump’s statement.”

In Mr. Trump’s circle, the pivot is a necessary corrective to years of misguided policy. He and his allies see the cost of defending Europe as too high, given other needs. Coming to some kind of accommodation with Moscow, in this view, would allow the United States to bring home more troops or shift national security resources toward China, which they see as “the biggest threat,” as Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it last month.

The U.S. reversal has certainly been pronounced over the past week. Just days after Vice President JD Vance excoriated European allies, saying “the threat from within” was more worrisome than Russia, Mr. Rubio met with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and talked up “the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians” if they could simply dispose of the Ukraine war.

No Ukrainian leaders were in the room for the meeting, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, much less other Europeans, although Mr. Rubio called several foreign ministers afterward to brief them. Instead, by all appearances, this was a meeting of two big powers dividing up areas of dominance, a modern-day Congress of Vienna or Yalta Conference.

Mr. Trump has long seen Mr. Putin as a compatriot, a strong and “very savvy” player whose effort to bully Ukraine into making territorial concessions was nothing short of “genius.” Mr. Putin, in his eyes, is someone worthy of admiration and respect, unlike the leaders of traditional U.S. allies like Germany, Canada or France, for whom he exhibits scorn.

Indeed, Mr. Trump has spent the first month of his second term stiffing the allies, not only leaving them out of the emerging Ukraine talks but threatening tariffs against them, demanding they increase their military spending and asserting claims over some of their territory. His billionaire patron Elon Musk has publicly backed the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

“For now, the Europeans see this as Trump normalizing Russia relations while treating his allies, the Europeans, as untrusted,” said Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, an international consulting firm. “Supporting the AfD, who the German leaders consider a neo-Nazi party, makes Trump look like an adversary to Europe’s largest economy. It’s an extraordinary change.”

Mr. Trump vowed during the campaign that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, which he has failed to do, and in fact said he would bring peace to Ukraine even before his inauguration, which he also failed to do. After a nearly 90-minute phone call with Mr. Putin last week, Mr. Trump assigned Mr. Rubio and two other advisers, Michael Waltz and Steve Witkoff, to pursue negotiations.

The concessions that Mr. Trump and his team have floated sound like a Kremlin wish list: Russia gets to keep all of the Ukrainian territory it illegally seized by force. The United States will not provide Ukraine with security guarantees, much less allow it into NATO. Sanctions will be lifted. The president has even suggested that Russia be readmitted to the Group of 7 major powers after it was expelled for its original 2014 incursion into Ukraine.

What would Mr. Putin have to give up for a deal? He would have to stop killing Ukrainians while he pockets his victory. Mr. Trump has not highlighted other concessions he would insist on. Nor has he said how Mr. Putin could be trusted to keep an agreement given that he violated a 1994 pact guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty and two cease-fire deals negotiated in Minsk, Belarus, in 2014 and 2015.

Mr. Trump’s evident faith in his ability to seal a deal with Mr. Putin mystifies veteran national security officials who have dealt with Russia over the years.

“We should be talking to them in the same way that we talked to Soviet leaders throughout the Cold War,” said Celeste A. Wallander, who dealt with Russia and Ukraine issues as assistant secretary of defense under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. “Which is you don’t trust them.”

“When you do negotiations,” she continued, “you do them with the presumption that they will violate them. You try to find overlapping interests, but recognize that our interests are fundamentally in conflict and we’re trying to manage a dangerous adversary, not become best friends.”

Speaking with reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Trump made it sound as if he did consider Russia to be a friend — but not Ukraine. “Russia wants to do something,” he said. “They want to stop the savage barbarianism.”

Mr. Trump expressed dismay about the killing and destruction wrought by what he called a “senseless war,” comparing scenes from the front to the Battle of Gettysburg with “body parts all over the field.” Ukraine, he said, was “being wiped out” and the war had to end. But he did not say who was wiping out Ukraine, leaving it clear he faulted its own leaders and dismissing their insistence to be part of any negotiations.

“I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Mr. Trump said. “Well, they’ve had a seat for three years. And a long time before that. This could have been settled very easily. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without, I think, without the loss of much land, very little land. Without the loss of any lives. And without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides.”

He repeated his claim that the invasion would not have happened had he been president, ignoring the fact that Russian-sponsored forces had waged war inside Ukraine all four years of his first term. “I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land,” he said without explaining why he did not try to negotiate peace when he was in office.

As he often does, Mr. Trump flavored his comments with multiple false claims. Among them, he said that the United States has contributed three times as much aid to Ukraine since the war started as Europe has. In fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe has allocated $138 billion compared with $119 billion from the United States.

He also denigrated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, saying more than once that “he’s down at 4 percent in approval rating.” In fact, Mr. Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen from its once-stratospheric heights, but only to around 50 percent — not that different from Mr. Trump’s own.

Mr. Trump also agreed with a Russian talking point that Ukraine should have new elections to play a part in negotiations. “Yeah, I would say that when they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to — wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it’s been a long time since we had an election?” he said. “That’s not a Russia thing. That’s something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.”

What other countries he did not say. Nor did he say anything about the need for elections in Russia, where any voting is controlled by the Kremlin and its allies.

Mr. Trump’s remarks were not scripted and came in response to questions by reporters. But they reflected how he sees the situation and foreshadowed the next few months. They also sent fresh shock waves through Europe, which is coming to grips with the fact that its chief ally in the new cold war no longer sees itself that way.

“Some of the most shameful comments uttered by a president in my lifetime,” Ian Bond, deputy director of the Center for European Reform in London, wrote online. “Trump is siding with the aggressor, blaming the victim. In the Kremlin they must be jumping for joy.”

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As commerce secretary, Mr. Lutnick will take on a broad portfolio that includes defending U.S. business interests worldwide and overseeing restrictions on technology exports to countries like China.

At his confirmation hearing last month, Mr. Lutnick said he would take a tough stance on the department’s oversight of technology sales to China and back up U.S. export controls with the threat of tariffs. He said the recent artificial intelligence technology released by the Chinese start-up DeepSeek had been underpinned by Meta’s open platform and chips sold by the U.S. company Nvidia.

“We need to stop helping them,” Mr. Lutnick said of China, adding, “I’m going to be very strong on that.”

As the United States resumes economic negotiations with the country, Mr. Lutnick is expected to play a central role. Mr. Trump said the new commerce secretary would oversee the work of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, which is traditionally the hub of trade policy.

Mr. Lutnick will assume that responsibility as Mr. Trump has already taken steps to upend the global trading system. The president has threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, imposed tariffs on China and initiated a process to begin imposing so-called reciprocal tariffs on all U.S. trading partners. The Commerce Department will work with other federal agencies to determine tariff rates for other countries.

Mr. Lutnick will also be responsible for overseeing and potentially overhauling programs that were top priorities for the Biden administration. Those include subsidies to U.S. chip manufacturers under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and an effort to provide broadband internet access to at least 6.25 million households and locations across the country.

Mr. Lutnick, who is a wealthy investor, has a network of ties that could raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest as he leads the way on government policies that could significantly affect businesses and markets, potentially enriching former customers or partners.

For instance, he has financial interests in the mining industry in Greenland through Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor has invested in Critical Metals, a company that has proposed mining metals and minerals in Greenland as soon as 2026. Mr. Trump has repeatedly proposed purchasing Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Demark.

A financial disclosure filing that Mr. Lutnick submitted last month showed executive positions he has held or holds in more than 800 individual firms. It also revealed that he received more than $350 million in income, distributions and bonuses in the past two years from his network of financial services and real estate firms.

Mr. Lutnick, who worked on Wall Street for decades, gained national attention when many of the employees at Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage firm where he was the president and chief executive, died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

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He now faces two more votes: one to block a filibuster on Thursday, and, if he prevails, a floor vote on his confirmation following soon after.

Mr. Patel, 44, has made attacking the F.B.I. a personal brand — in a book called “Government Gangsters,” in television and on podcast interviews. He has leveraged unflinching fealty to the president into a nomination for one of the most powerful posts in the country, despite his lack of law enforcement experience compared with those who have held the job before him.

Despite these concerns, Senate Republicans — who were less than enthusiastic about his selection after President Trump announced his plan to put him in the post in November — have fallen into line as they have with the president’s other nominations.

A few hours before the vote on Tuesday, Mr. Patel made a brief appearance at Justice Department headquarters, located across the street from the F.B.I. Officials would not say whom he had visited or why.

If confirmed, Mr. Patel, a Long Island native, will face a bureau roiled by conflict and uncertainty.

In recent weeks, Trump appointees at the Justice Department have ordered the F.B.I. to supply the names of bureau personnel who helped investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, raising the possibility that the administration plans to purge career bureau officials, including rank-and-file field agents.

At least nine high-ranking officials have been forced out since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, plunging the bureau into confusion and prompting the head of the bureau’s New York City office to say that all of these actions have spread “fear and angst within the F.B.I. ranks.”

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Judge Contreras noted that Mr. Trump could remove members of the panel only if they had neglected their duty or engaged in malfeasance, acts that he said Ms. Harris had not been shown to have committed. Ms. Harris had “demonstrated that she is likely to show her termination as a member of the M.S.P.B. was unlawful,” Judge Contreras added.

Federal workers who are laid off or punished in other ways typically appeal to the merit board, and are sent to administrative judges for initial hearings. Appeals are directed to the merit board for a final decision, which can then serve as precedent.

The firing of Ms. Harris, which she said she learned of in a one-sentence email last week, appeared to be an attempt to reshape the composition of the panel in a way that could have favored Republicans, giving them power over a little-known but critical government organ that protects federal workers from unfair punishment. If Mr. Trump successfully replaces Ms. Harris with a loyalist, the merit board could rule more favorably on the mass agency layoffs his administration has already begun ordering.

Ms. Harris said in a short phone call on Tuesday afternoon that she had raced back to the merit board’s offices within a half-hour of the judge’s ruling.

“There’s never been anyone happier to be back at work than me,” Ms. Harris said.

Her lawyer, Michael Kator, said on Tuesday that Ms. Harris would now need to wait for the judge to potentially grant a so-called preliminary injunction, which would allow Ms. Harris to keep her job until the case is resolved or a higher court reverses the decision.

“It’s an important first step,” he said. “But obviously it’s only the first step.”

Most foreign carmakers already have factories in the United States. Still, 25 percent tariffs would have a significant impact on the price of vehicles that are imported, like the Volkswagen ID.Buzz electric van, BMW Mini or any Porsche.

Around one-fifth of new cars sold in the United States last year, or 2.9 million vehicles, were imported, according to JATO, a research firm. That figure includes vehicles made in Mexico and Canada, as well as Europe and Asia.

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In Panama, the migrants have been locked in a soaring, glass-paneled downtown hotel, the Decapolis Hotel Panama. Reporters from The New York Times managed to speak to several people there — including some from Iran and China — who said they had left their countries for the United States because their lives were in danger.

Around 150 migrants who had not agreed to be deported would be relocated from the hotel to a camp near the jungle known as the Darién Gap, according to Panama’s security minister, Frank Ábrego. He said at a news conference on Tuesday that the migrants would remain at the camp, San Vicente, until they were offered asylum in a third country “where they felt safe.”

Mr. Ábrego said that no one had applied for asylum in Panama.

Panamanian authorities have not permitted the deportees to leave the hotel, and a lawyer seeking to represent several migrants, Jenny Soto Fernández, told The Times that officials had blocked her from entering the building at least four times.

In an interview, Ms. Soto said that several migrants from Iran had asked for her help in applying for refugee status in Panama. “I have all the legal documents ready,” she said, adding that she was “still not able to get to” the people.

Mr. Ábrego said at the news conference that his government was keeping the migrants in the hotel in an effort to “guarantee security and peace for Panamanian citizens.”

Last week, Panama’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Ruiz-Hernández, described the migrants as “having no criminal records.”

Mr. Ábrego said that, of the more than 170 migrants who had signed orders authorizing their deportation, around 20 were expected to depart for their home countries in the next week. He said one deportee in the group, from Ireland, had already returned home.

Questions at Tuesday’s news conference focused largely on the accounts of migrants in the hotel that were gathered by The Times.

Asked by reporters about a deportee’s suicide attempt, which was recounted to Times reporters by several people, Mr. Ábrego said he had no prior knowledge of it. He said a migrant who was said to have broken a leg trying to escape from the hotel had twisted an ankle on a staircase.

Mr. Ábrego repeatedly pointed to the United Nations agencies that are charged with responding to the needs of the migrants deported to Panama under Panama’s agreements with the United States: the International Organization for Migration, or I.O.M., and U.N.H.C.R., or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also known as the U.N. Refugee Agency.

The security minister said the deportees were only in temporary custody of Panamanian officials. “Custody sounds bad,” he said. “They’re under our protection.”

Annie Correal reported from Mexico City and Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia. Alex E. Hernández contributed reporting from Panama City.

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Mr. LaCivita is working for the Democratic Party of Albania ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections in May, when it will try to overtake the governing left-wing Socialist Party. In text messages to The New York Times, Mr. LaCivita characterized his work as an extension of his assistance to Mr. Trump.

“I’m exporting MAGA — Make Albania Great Again!” Mr. LaCivita wrote.

The leader of the Democratic Party of Albania is Sali Berisha, a former president and prime minister who is facing corruption charges in Albania in connection with a property deal. The Biden administration imposed sanctions on Mr. Berisha in 2021 for “significant corruption,” according to a statement from former Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who accused him of misappropriating public funds and using his power to enrich his allies and family.

Mr. LaCivita argued that the accusations against Mr. Berisha were politically motivated, and suggested the Albanian politician’s experience aligned with that of Mr. Trump.

“It’s a natural fit — beating a Socialist who’s a pawn and puppet of the Soros family,” Mr. LaCivita said, evoking unsubstantiated claims by Mr. Berisha that the Democratic megadonor George Soros was behind the sanctions. Mr. Berisha has indicated that he intends to ask the Trump administration to reconsider the State Department’s sanctions.

Mr. Berisha has used his party’s hiring of Mr. LaCivita to link himself to Mr. Trump, though the U.S. president has not signaled support for a preferred party in the parliamentary elections. Mr. Berisha also has sought to distinguish himself from the governing party by vowing that if the opposition wins, it will not renew Albania’s agreement to accept migrants from Italy.

Strategists for winning presidential campaigns have long marketed their services abroad. There is often high demand for consultants with ties to the new U.S. president from foreign politicians seeking to portray themselves as the favored candidate of Washington, which can be an advantage in many parts of the world.

But Mr. LaCivita, who appeared this month with Mr. Berisha at a news conference in Albania, said he would not approach the Trump administration on behalf of Mr. Berisha or his party.

“I don’t lobby,” Mr. LaCivita said. “I do campaigns, and that’s what I am doing — pretty straightforward.”

After Mr. Trump was elected in November, Mr. LaCivita became involved in a variety of enterprises. He accepted a position on the board of advisers of the government relations firm Michael Best Strategies, which lobbies for corporate clients including T-Mobile and the cryptocurrency company Ripple Labs, though he did not register to lobby himself.

Mr. LaCivita also joined the global advisory council of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. And he teamed with other Trump-linked consultants, including Paul Manafort, who served as chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, to pitch political consulting services to far-right politicians around the world.

Mr. LaCivita would not say whether other consultants were involved in the Albania work, and several of them did not respond to requests for comment. He also would not say whether he had signed on any other foreign clients, but suggested that he had been traveling widely.

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Ms. Johnson’s appointment has not been finalized, and like many things in Mr. Trump’s world, plans could change. When reached by phone, Ms. Johnson declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Johnson, whose case was originally brought to Mr. Trump’s attention by Kim Kardashian, has become a vocal supporter of the president. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers see her as being politically helpful to him over the years; during the 2020 presidential race, the Trump campaign featured her in a Super Bowl ad in an effort to reach Black voters.

Still, her case, and the new role of “pardon czar,” show how Mr. Trump’s approach to criminal justice reform is rife with contradictions. He signed the bipartisan First Step Act, which aimed to reduce prison sentences for certain nonviolent drug crimes, during his first term, then told advisers privately soon afterward that he regretted it, according to multiple officials working with him at the time.

During his 2024 campaign, he called for shooting thieves who steal from drugstores and for the death penalty for drug traffickers and dealers. Then, in one of his first acts as president in his second term, he issued a grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — violent and nonviolent alike.

Ms. Johnson’s case was seen as an example of draconian sentencing laws that disproportionately affected nonviolent offenders, particularly women and members of minority communities. Her case became a rallying cry for reform after a viral video of Ms. Johnson speaking from prison caught the attention of Ms. Kardashian.

Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was then a presidential adviser, arranged a meeting between Ms. Kardashian and Mr. Trump in May 2018 — on Ms. Johnson’s 63rd birthday — and Ms. Kardashian pleaded her case.

Mr. Trump commuted Ms. Johnson’s sentence one week later, freeing her from prison. He then issued a full pardon during his 2020 re-election campaign, which wiped the conviction from her record.

Mr. Trump’s decision faced opposition within his administration and among some allies.

Ms. Johnson had been locked up in an Alabama federal prison since 1996 after being sentenced to life plus 25 years in prison as a first-time, nonviolent offender. She had been charged with cocaine possession and money laundering in a drug conspiracy case.

A single mother of five in Memphis, she had a history of gambling, unemployment, bankruptcy and foreclosure before becoming involved in a drug ring. She was arrested in 1993 as part of an operation that transported cocaine from Houston to Memphis, relaying coded messages between conspirators.

She also purchased a house with a down payment that she structured with three separate money orders under the $10,000 reporting limit. Under mandatory sentencing rules, she was given a life term without parole, even though she had never sold drugs. Several co-defendants who testified against her were sentenced to probation or terms of up to 10 years.

Ms. Johnson had served two decades of the sentence, during which she became a grandmother and great-grandmother, took educational and vocational programs, volunteered to help sick and dying prisoners, and helped coordinate the prison’s Special Olympics.

Mr. Trump cited Ms. Johnson’s case, among others, at the signing ceremony for the First Step Act.

“Alice Johnson — I let her out. She was in jail for 22 years. She had another 28 years. And the crime was, let’s say — I think most of you would agree — was not worthy of a 50-year term in prison,” he said.

“And she came out, and I’ll never forget the look on her face,” Mr. Trump said, going on to describe watching her be embraced by her family. “I said, what a beautiful thing that is.”

First Step was one of the most consequential criminal justice reform bills in decades. It combined new funding for anti-recidivism programs, the expansion of early-release credits for prisoners and the reduction of certain mandatory minimum sentences. The bill would help shape the experiences of tens of thousands of current inmates and future offenders. Thousands were released from federal custody after its passage.

In a November 2024 television interview, Ms. Johnson said that after her release she personally submitted over 100 petitions to the White House after Mr. Trump asked her to compile a list of people she believed deserved clemency.

“I’m so blessed to be free myself,” she said. “The work continues. I can’t help but advocate for people who are incarcerated, because I’m really one of them. I’m just a free one of them.”

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“It’s a sinister goal,” Mr. Wright said at the event. “It’s a terrible goal.” He also incorrectly blamed renewable energy for what he called Britain’s “economic collapse.”

His attack on the policy objectives of the government in London was highly unusual, all the more so given what’s long been known as the special relationship between the United States and Britain, reflecting the close cultural, economic and military ties between the two.

Independent research shows that while the transition to renewable energy is expensive and can require substantial public investment, it has also created jobs, spurred technological innovation and brought down costs over time. Broadly speaking, renewable energy has become increasingly competitive and sometimes cheaper than fossil fuels. In Britain, wind energy is among the cheapest sources of power.

Mr. Wright is a former fracking company executive. His office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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But an N.S.F. employee with knowledge of the matter disputed that all of those fired on Tuesday were on probation. The employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said that only about half of the layoffs were of probationary staff, and the other half affected more senior specialists.

The Trump administration ordered agencies last week to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 government workers on probation, and mass firings began to cascade through the government, with some departments laying off more than a thousand employees at a time. Other agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service, are still preparing to lay off thousands more employees this week.

Over the weekend, cuts targeting scientists and public health officials rattled through the civil service. An estimated 1,200 employees at the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier biomedical research agency, have already been dismissed. Employees at the N.S.F. were told earlier this month to expect a total reduction in its work force of 25 to 50 percent, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the plans publicly.

Workers on probation do not receive the same protections that many other federal employees have. Probationary periods tend to last a year, but they can be longer for certain positions.

The N.S.F. and the N.I.H. are the two cornerstones of public research funding in the United States. The N.S.F. focuses on nonmedical scientific research, supporting advanced research on quantum computing, artificial intelligence, observation of outer space, and the creation of new advanced materials used in electronics.

The list of scientific breakthroughs accomplished with N.S.F. funding is expansive, but the foundation has supported the development of society-changing inventions like the internet, smartphones, M.R.I. scanning, LASIK eye surgery, 3-D printing, kidney transplants, lithium-ion batteries, radar, LED lights and even the language learning app Duolingo.

Coral Davenport contributed reporting.

Trump, talking to reporters, continues to provide false accounts of how much aid has been provided to Ukraine, asserting that the U.S. has sent three times as much as Europe. In fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks this, Europe has allocated $138 billion compared to $119 billion from the United States.

He also gives false information about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s support in Ukraine. Zelensky’s approval rating has fallen to around 50 percent, not 4 percent, as Trump claimed.

Once again, Trump conflates spending he disfavors with corruption. “This is fraud,” he says of spending projects that are not at all criminal or corrupt even in his own description.

He cites projects such as encouraging democracy and voter turnout in India or teaching enterprise in other countries. Policymakers can disagree with those and say they are not high priority, but they are not by definition “fraud.”

Trump said that he is considering imposing 25 percent tariffs on imports of cars, semiconductors and pharmaceuticals.

Tariffs that big on cars would be seriously bad news for European industry. Analysts at the research firm Oxford Economics have estimated that a 25 percent tariff on E.U. car exports could hit Germany and Italy especially hard, since they export many vehicles to the United States: German automotive exports could fall by 7.1 percent, and Italian by 6.6 percent.

Trump also speaks as if the Ukraine war only started after he left office. In fact, Russia first invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 and was at war with Ukraine all four years of Trump’s first term, before its full-fledged invasion in 2022.

In fact, Trump sounded sanguine about Russian’s annexation of Crimea when he first campaigned in 2015.

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The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It’s called the Gulf of America now. It’s not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it, just like we have the right to do Mount McKinley. And nobody’s even challenging that, but only the associated — essentially, it’s primarily The Associated Press, and I don’t know what they’re doing, but I just say that we’re going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it’s the Gulf of America. We’re very proud of this country, and we want it to be the Gulf of America. Now, The Associated Press, as you know, has been very, very wrong on the election, on Trump and the treatment of Trump, and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives. And they’re doing us no favors. And I guess I’m not doing them any favors. That’s the way life works.

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With whole teams slashed and fewer staff to provide basic functions like cleaning up trails, emptying pit toilets, carrying out trash and staffing visitors centers, employees say these vast public lands are in danger of falling into disarray.

Current and former employees of these agencies say their departments were already underfunded and understaffed before the job cuts, particularly as climate change has begun to significantly transform America’s natural areas.

Over the weekend, I spoke to nearly a dozen employees who were terminated or saw their job offers rescinded, along with managers forced to deliver those notices from the Forest Service and the National Park Service. Most had been employed by the federal government for years or even decades.

Some of the cuts could threaten the local economies and safety of nearby towns, the employees say. Among those whose jobs were eliminated were river and wilderness rangers, scientists who help keep forests healthy to minimize fire danger, analysts, attorneys and administrators. Many were trained to assist firefighters, possessing skills that are required each summer as climate change causes bigger and more severe fires.

The workers had a lot in common: Most lived in small towns, most had no backup plan when they were let go and all expressed that they had worked for these agencies because they loved public lands and wanted to be of service to their communities.

Patrolling America’s wilderness

Kate White, 29, lost her position as a wilderness ranger outside Seattle on Saturday after six years of seasonal work and 20 months of permanent employment with the U.S. Forest Service. She and her six co-workers took care of 500 miles of popular trails crisscrossing the Cascade Mountains. In a single season, she said, they monitored 70 backcountry toilets, carried out 600 pounds of trash and disposed of more than a thousand piles of human waste.

This weekend, most of her co-workers also lost their jobs. Just one is left, which means just one staff member has the primary duty of patrolling 340,000 acres of wilderness, White said.

Many workers in these agencies, outside of full-time firefighting, carry what’s called a red card, which means they’re trained to assist in wildland firefighting. Without those personnel, it will be more challenging to manage the increased risk of wildfire under climate change.

Another employee who had a job offer rescinded at Mount Rainier National Park worried over visitor safety in the mountains. “Large areas of the alpine terrain are going to be unstaffed and inaccessible for long periods of time,” the employee said.

An employee at a national forest in California said the cuts, plus unfilled roles, meant their particular forest would go into the summer with 80 percent fewer staff members overall, not including full-time firefighters. Both employees asked to remain anonymous out of fear of being terminated or not being rehired by the U.S. government.

Search and rescue

On Friday morning, Stacy Ramsey, 49, was monitoring a section of the Buffalo National River, a 135-mile waterway in northern Arkansas managed by the National Park Service, when she saw an email pop up on her phone with a headline that included the word “termination.”

She was still in shock when, minutes later, she received a text to return to headquarters. There, the division chiefs, some crying, gathered in a conference room to tell her the firing was effective immediately.

“They looked like someone had died,” Ramsey recalled the next day. She’d spent three years in a contract position, working weekends while holding down a second full-time job just to get her foot in the door. She’d become the park’s only year-round river ranger last March.

Ramsey had grown up along the Buffalo in Searcy County, one of the poorest parts of Arkansas. She made $39,000 a year, a pay cut from her previous job teaching middle school, but just enough to cover her mortgage and bills.

In the last few years, Ramsey noticed the river was changing, which she attributed to more extreme weather under a warming planet. Last summer, an extended drought caused four miles of the river to dry up, killing hundreds of fish. Major floods have become more common, eroding the banks and making the river wider and shallower. Floods also wash in trees, creating dangerous culverts called strainers. She said these events can increase dangers for park visitors.

Her job as a river ranger was to keep them safe: She monitored the waterway, talked to visitors and issued warnings for parts of the river that could put them at risk.

“If no one is there to educate, it increases the risk of someone getting hurt on the river,” Ramsey said.

Safety and education

Workers I spoke with said there will simply be fewer people to educate visitors about the wilderness.

Read more:

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As Trump targets research, scientists share grief and resolve to fight

At the annual gathering in Boston this past week of one of America’s oldest scientific societies, the discussions touched on threats to humankind: runaway artificial intelligence, toxic “forever chemicals,” the eventual end of the universe.

But the most urgent threats for many scientists were the ones aimed at them, as the Trump administration slashes the federal scientific work force and cuts back on billions of dollars in funding for research at universities. — Raymond Zhong

Read the full story here.

Texas county declares an emergency over toxic fertilizer

A Texas county is taking steps to declare a state of emergency and seek federal assistance over farmland contaminated with harmful “forever chemicals,” as concerns grow over the safety of fertilizer made from sewage.

Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, has been roiled since county investigators found high levels of chemicals called PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, at two cattle ranches in the county in 2023.

The county says the PFAS, also known as forever chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment, came from contaminated fertilizer used on a neighboring farm.

PFAS, which are used in everyday items like nonstick cookware and stain-resistant carpets, have been found to increase the risk of certain types of cancer and can cause birth defects, developmental delays in children and other health harms. —Hiroko Tabuchi

Read the full story here.

More climate news:

• Brazil has begun major raids into illegal logging operations in the Amazon, Reuters reports.

• CNN explores whether Elon Musk’s politics are hurting Tesla sales.

• The Guardian reports that Trump’s federal funding freeze could hurt a recent solar energy boom in Republican states.

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