Trump Administration Live Updates: Senate Approves Spending Bill to Avert Government Shutdown

The action came just hours before a midnight deadline to avoid a lapse in funding.

The spending debate inflamed intraparty tensions among Democrats that have simmered for weeks about how to mount the most effective resistance to President Trump at a time when he is taking full advantage of his governing trifecta — control of the White House, Senate and House — to trample on congressional power, slashing federal funding and firing government workers with little regard for the guardrails that normally constrain the executive branch.

Mr. Schumer’s abrupt decision to reverse himself and allow the spending legislation to advance stunned many of his colleagues and angered many Democratic lawmakers and progressive activists who were spoiling for a shutdown fight to show their determination to counter Mr. Trump. Many in his party vociferously opposed the temporary spending measure, arguing that it was a capitulation to the president that would supercharge his efforts, and those of his billionaire ally Elon Musk, to defund and dismantle broad swaths of the government.

As recently as Wednesday, Mr. Schumer was arguing strongly against the bill and proposing a monthlong alternative to allow Congress to reach an agreement on individual spending measures with specific instructions over how federal funding should be doled out.

But he reversed course on Thursday after Republicans rejected a shorter-term stopgap bill, with a shutdown looming and amid concerns that Democrats would be blamed.

Recognizing that Democrats were left with only an up-or-down alternative, Mr. Schumer argued that a shutdown would only play into the hands of Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk, ceding more power to them to commandeer federal agencies. In a shutdown, he said, the Trump administration could decide which federal workers would be deemed “nonessential” and furloughed. And he warned that Republicans would have little incentive to reopen the government.

“As bad as the C.R. is,” Mr. Schumer said on Friday morning, using shorthand for continuing resolution, “I believe that allowing President Trump to take more power is a far worse option.”

Democrats joining Mr. Schumer in voting to move it forward included several members of his leadership team — Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada — and two who have announced their plans to retire: Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Democratic Senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire also voted yes, as did Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with their party.

Ms. Shaheen and Mr. King also voted for final passage. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was the sole Republican to oppose it.

“Today’s vote on the continuing resolution was a difficult and close call, but ultimately, I made the determination that a flawed bill was better than no bill at all,” Mr. Schatz said in a statement. “A shutdown would enable Donald Trump and Elon Musk to unilaterally determine that the vast majority of federal workers are not essential. And given the number of federal workers in Hawaii, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state.”

The Republican stopgap legislation would largely keep federal funds flowing at levels set during the Biden administration, but would increase spending for the military by $6 billion. It would not include funds for any earmarks for projects in lawmakers’ districts or states, saving roughly $13 billion.

It also would effectively slash the District of Columbia’s budget by roughly $1 billion over the next six months. But as part of Mr. Schumer’s agreement with Republicans to allow the bill to move forward, the Senate was set to consider a separate measure that would reverse that cut, which local leaders had warned would force dramatic cuts to essential services.

What most concerns Democrats is that the stopgap measure does not contain the specific congressional instructions to allocate money for programs usually included in spending bills. Top Democrats, including Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the party’s lead appropriator, have warned that the lack of explicit directions would essentially create slush funds for the Trump administration at a time when it has already disregarded spending directives set by Congress.

“We have already seen how far President Trump, Elon Musk, and Russ Vought are willing to twist — and outright break — our laws to suit their will,” Ms. Murray said, referring to Russell Vought, Mr. Trump’s budget director. “But House Republicans are setting them up to make everything so far look like child’s play.”

The measure’s Democratic opponents included senators from across the ideological spectrum. A number of centrists voted against the measure, as well as those facing tough re-election contests next year.

The intraparty divide over the measure boiled down to a dispute among Democrats about which of two bad outcomes would be worse for the country. Mr. Schumer and those who voted to allow the spending patch to move forward argued that failing to do so would cause a shutdown that would give Mr. Trump maximum latitude to fund or defund whatever parts of government he saw fit to. But other Democrats said funding the government when the president was moving unilaterally to cut programs and employees would endorse his actions and cede even more congressional control.

Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who will face voters next year, said in a statement that he was against the legislation in part because it failed “to impose any constraints on the reckless and out-of-control Trump administration.”

“Both parties in Congress must fulfill our constitutional obligation to check the president,” Mr. Ossoff said.

Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, blamed Mr. Schumer and Democrats for the funding predicament Congress found itself in because of a failure to push annual spending bills through while the Senate was under Democratic control last year.

“To be clear, Republicans aren’t thrilled about another C.R.,” Mr. Thune said Friday before the vote. “But it is our best option to make sure that last year’s failure by Democrats doesn’t interfere with this year’s appropriations process.”

He pledged to make the annual spending bills a priority to try to avert a similar pileup next year.

A part of the site devoted to segregation and civil rights was largely scrubbed. That section once included a walking tour focused on Black soldiers and a lesson plan on reconstruction.

The cemetery, which is operated by the Army, said in a statement on Friday that it remained committed to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism” and that it was working to restore links to the content.

“We are hopeful to begin republishing content next week,” Kerry Meeker, a cemetery spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday.

On Friday, the cemetery’s website still had an active page describing Section 27, which includes the graves of thousands of African Americans freed from slavery. Another active page listed prominent African Americans — including Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall and Colin L. Powell — buried on the grounds.

The restoration of any removed material would be carried out in line with President Trump’s executive orders, the cemetery said. One of Mr. Trump’s orders, aimed at schools, urges a crackdown on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, cast the website changes as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to erase the accomplishments of women and people of color.

“The whole thing is deeply concerning,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “Even if you have concerns about the way D.E.I. was handled in a number of different places, I’ve never seen a problem within the military.”

He said that the Defense Department seemed to be focused on “fighting cultural fights day in and day out” and that its approach of “being directly hostile to any kind of diversity” would damage recruiting.

The military has moved quickly to remove references to diversity from its websites since Mr. Trump took office. And for about a week, the Air Force paused using an instructional video for trainees about the accomplishments of the first Black pilots in the military, said Lt. Gen. Brian S. Robinson, head of the Air Education and Training Command.

The changes to Arlington National Cemetery’s website were previously reported by Task & Purpose, a news website focused on the military.

Arlington National Cemetery, which covers 639 grassy, hilly acres in Virginia near the Potomac River, is the resting place of more than 400,000 veterans and is the largest U.S. military cemetery.

Kevin M. Levin, a Civil War historian in Boston who helped identify the website changes, said they would deprive educators of valuable tools for connecting students with history.

“This is an incredibly rich historical landscape,” he said of the cemetery. “And to see any of its history either distorted or erased entirely — as an educator, and as a historian — it’s incredibly troubling.”

Mr. Trump has said he wants to use Guantánamo’s 30,000 beds “to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” He issued an executive order in January to expand the Migrant Operations Center there “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.” The administration has sent two groups of migrants to Guantánamo, but it is not clear how many were considered dangerous criminals.

Days before the hearing on Friday, the Trump administration abruptly returned a group of migrants it had sent to Guantánamo to the United States, without indicating why. It was the second time federal officials had suddenly cleared the base of migrants who had been flown there. In late February, the government repatriated all but one of 178 detained migrants to Venezuela after they spent just a few weeks at the facility. One migrant was brought back to the United States.

Judge Nichols on Friday considered two challenges brought by migrants and advocacy groups on their behalf. Less than 30 minutes after the lawyers finished their arguments, he said the plaintiffs had “failed to established they are suffering irreparable harm” that warranted a temporary order to halt the administration’s policies.

Judge Nichols said that if the government sent any of the migrants in question to Guantánamo, he would be prepared to consider issuing an emergency order. Lawyers for the Trump administration said they would notify the judge if any plaintiffs were sent there, and were instructed to inform the court by Wednesday of how early in the relocation process they would do so.

But Judge Nichols expressed doubts that the plaintiffs would succeed on the merits of the cases, when no migrants remained at Guantánamo.

In the first lawsuit, filed in response to the administration sending Venezuelan citizens to Guantánamo, Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued that government had unfairly barred migrants from having in-person access to lawyers.

Sarah Wilson, a Justice Department lawyer, countered that the work of relocating migrants there was still too new to accommodate lawyers, given the logistical challenges and need for security clearances.

The second lawsuit, filed by 10 migrants who claimed to be at risk of being transferred to Guantánamo because of their nationalities and removal orders against them, challenged the legality of the transfers. The plaintiffs asserted that the government has no right to detain migrants outside the United States, and that conditions at Guantánamo were worse than those at domestic detention facilities.

Drew Ensign, a Justice Department lawyer, argued that since immigration enforcement by definition involves moving migrants across borders, the administration could keep migrants with removal orders in American custody overseas. The practice was akin to transporting migrants over international waters from Hawaii to the mainland, Mr. Ensign added, or through other countries while being deported to their home nations.

But Mr. Gelernt called Mr. Ensign’s comparisons misleading, saying the migrants at Guantánamo had not been in transit or in the process of being removed. No prior administration had argued that immigration law gave the government the right to detain migrants extraterritorially, he added.

Mr. Gelernt also pointed to the conditions some migrants were subject to at Guantánamo, including strip searches, shackling and solitary confinement. That treatment is harsher than conditions found in detention centers in the United States, he said, making relocation there unfair and unconstitutional.

Judge Nichols was particularly focused on the question of whether immigration law gave the government the right to detain migrants at extraterritorial facilities. Though he did not offer an answer, he said it was “a serious question.”

But Judge Nichols rejected the migrants’ argument that staying at Guantánamo, however briefly, would cause them irreparable harm. If migrants who brought the lawsuits were moved to Guantánamo, he said, lawyers could demand an emergency order to bring them back to the United States, likely within days.

Outside the courthouse, Mr. Gelernt expressed frustration, saying the administration had sidestepped challenges to its policy by abruptly relocating the migrants.

He suggested that the advocacy groups would try to mount a broader challenge by filing a class-action lawsuit. “We see now what the government is doing by continually trying to” get cases dismissed as moot “by moving people around,” Mr. Gelernt added.

Mr. Ensign said the Justice Department would ask to dismiss the case.

Here’s a fact-check.

His legal troubles

What Was Said

“They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”

“They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home Mar-a-Lago and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”

This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump’s claims refer to a wide array of investigations and criminal cases that occurred before, during and after his first term as president.

The F.B.I. investigated contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials; Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general appointed a special counsel that continued that investigation during his first term; after Mr. Trump left office, he was then charged in four state and federal criminal cases — two concerning his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and one related to his retention of classified documents after he left office. Employees, family members and allies of Mr. Trump became entangled in those cases at various points.

But the president and his supporters have provided no evidence of a vast, yearslong conspiracy to coordinate these investigations — taking place over nearly a decade across three presidential administrations — as a political weapon against him.

While the F.B.I. privately investigated Mr. Trump’s campaign for ties to Russia in 2016, James Comey, the bureau’s director at the time, publicly announced an investigation of Mr. Trump’s presidential rival at the time, Hillary Clinton, in a move that critics said had aided Mr. Trump politically.

Officials in the Trump administration later expressed concern about Mr. Trump’s desire to shut down the investigation of his campaign after he took office, and Rod Rosenstein, Mr. Trump’s deputy attorney general, appointed a special counsel to shield the investigation from political pressure and avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest within the government.

After Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, Mr. Trump was indicted in four criminal felony cases. Of the four cases, two were brought by state or local prosecutors, meaning that the Justice Department has no control over them. His two other criminal cases were overseen by a special counsel, appointed to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Mr. Trump’s rival in the 2024 campaign.

The 2020 election

What Was Said

“The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor.”

False. Though Mr. Trump appeared to refer to multiple elections, he was most likely reprising his lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. A mountain of evidence — recounts, court rulings and audits by elections officials all confirmed Mr. Biden’s electoral victory in 2020.

Biden and classified documents

What WAS Said

“We also terminated the clearances of the Biden crime family and Joe Biden himself. He didn’t deserve it. In fact, he was essentially found guilty. But they said he was incompetent. And therefore, let’s not find him guilty.”

False. Mr. Trump was referring to a special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Biden had retained and disclosing classified material after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 — acts that are felony offenses.

Robert K. Hur, the special counsel in the case, said in his final report that Mr. Biden had retained and shared sensitive material, but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted” because the evidence did not “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Mr. Hur, in his role as a prosecutor, could not rule that Mr. Biden was guilty before a trial, and the president was never charged with a crime.

But Mr. Hur did raise doubts about Mr. Biden’s memory and advanced age based off their interviews, and suggested that had played a role in his decision not to recommend charges. He wrote, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol

What Was Said

“I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated. We removed the senior F.B.I. officials who misdirected resources to send SWAT teams after grandmothers and J6 hostages.”

This needs context. Mr. Trump, in one of his first official acts in his second term, pardoned hundreds of people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many of those included people who had been convicted of violent crimes and weapons charges. Others had threatened law enforcement officials who had investigated the attack.

But Mr. Trump has long sought to rewrite the history of the attack, portraying the rioters as martyrs to his political cause. He has also singled out the case of Rebecca Lavrenz, who promoted herself online as the “J6 praying grandma,” for her conviction on misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot. There is no evidence that Ms. Lavrenz was the target of a police SWAT raid.

Parents, anti-abortion activists and Catholics

What WAS Said

The Biden administration “set loose violent criminals while targeting patriotic parents at school board meetings; they drop charges against antifa and Hamas supporters while labeling traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists.”

This needs context. Mr. Trump’s claims about the persecution of parents and Catholics stem from F.B.I. efforts to track threats made against school boards, teachers and other officials, as well as a leaked memo prepared by an F.B.I. field office that warned of the potential for extremism for adherents of a “radical-traditionalist Catholic” ideology.

Mr. Trump and other Republicans seized on both efforts as evidence that the Biden administration sought to target parents concerned about education efforts opposed on the right — like inclusive policies toward transgender students and diversity initiatives — and to repress Christian groups.

In 2021, the F.B.I. had created a “threat tag” to apply to reports of threats, harassment and violence against school officials, which had risen significantly at the time. Such tags are used by the bureau to track trends and share information across offices, and are commonly used for crimes like drug offenses and human trafficking. House Republicans investigated and criticized those efforts.

The memo warning of potential extremism among traditional Catholic groups had distinguished between those radicalized and not radicalized, saying “radical-traditionalist Catholics” who could potentially pose a threat were a small minority. The memo had also suggested gathering information and developing sources within churches to help identify suspicious activity.

The memo was later withdrawn after it became public, and the nation’s top law enforcement officials repeatedly denounced it. An internal Justice Department investigation later concluded that the memo had violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent.”

Experts said at the time that they were unaware of any data to support the idea that Catholics were being widely persecuted by the government for their faith — let alone at record levels. Mr. Biden is a practicing Catholic who often cited his faith for guidance on decisions in office.

What WAS Said

“They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers and child predators from all over the world to come into our country while putting elderly Christians and pro-life activists on trial for singing hymns and for saying prayers.”

False. Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to the cases of some anti-abortion activists who were convicted of crimes against civil rights, and who Mr. Trump pardoned soon after taking office.

The protesters were not put on trial for praying, as Mr. Trump claimed, but for conspiring against civil rights and violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act — which makes it a crime to threaten, obstruct or injure a person seeking access to a reproductive health clinic or to damage clinic property. The defendants in the case had blockaded an abortion clinic in Washington, D.C., in October 2020.

Immigration and crime

What WAS Said

“Our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded … it turned out that we really didn’t need new legislation. All you needed was a new president.”

This needs context. Mr. Trump is correct that illegal border crossings have declined drastically since he took office. That is in part because of a series of restrictions he imposed at the border and in part because Mexico, in response to his threat of tariffs, bolstered its migration enforcement. In February, illegal crossings reached a record low of about 8,300.

That said, illegal crossings began to decline after the Biden administration over the summer reached a similar agreement with Mexico and the United States imposed new restrictions that sharply curtailed asylum applications.

What WAS Said

“Under the Biden regime, average monthly homicides increased by 14 percent, property crimes rose tremendously, violent crime went up at least 37 percent that they know of, rapes soared by 42 percent, car theft rose by 48 percent and robbery surged 63 to 100 percent. They don’t even know what the number is.”

This lacks evidence. It is unclear what statistics Mr. Trump is referring to in making his comparison, though the general intent is to paint a picture of an America experiencing soaring crime. But in 2024, when Mr. Biden was still in office, murders and crime in general declined in the country. Robberies and rapes were lower than they were before the pandemic. Aggravated assaults were still elevated from the pre-Covid days, but they trended down in 2024.

What WAS Said

“They didn’t even know why. They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, child predators, from all over the world to come into our country.”

False. The Biden administration did not purposely allow criminals into the country, but it did experience a historic level of illegal crossings at the border. Homeland Security secretaries have long said most of the crossings are people fleeing poverty and persecution rather than violent criminals. During the campaign, Mr. Trump effectively highlighted crimes migrants had committed to build support for his immigration policies. But immigrants overall are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States, according to studies of arrest and incarceration rates.

Egg prices

What WAS Said

“By the way, price of eggs is down 35 percent in the last week and half.”

This needs context. Signs suggest that wholesale prices, meaning the price retailers pay to procure eggs, have dropped by at least 35 percent since the start the month. That is most likely a relief for consumers, though it remains unclear what exactly it will mean for prices in grocery aisles.

Data from the Agriculture Department shows that wholesale egg prices have been falling sharply since the beginning of March after soaring through February, from a national average of over $8 for a dozen large white eggs at the start of the month to under $5 this week. The department cited “no significant outbreaks” of bird flu so far this month and “rapidly improving” supply. (The Justice Department has opened an antitrust investigation into major egg producers over prices, though producers point to bird flu as the key culprit.)

These prices are still well above long-term averages, though, and the extent to which lower wholesale prices are showing up in retail prices remains to be seen. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released on Wednesday showed that in February, egg prices rose 10.4 percent from the previous month, continuing their climb.

Mr. Rubio made his comments above a repost of an article from Breitbart, a right-leaning news site, about remarks Mr. Rasool made on Friday at an institute in Johannesburg. The article quoted Mr. Rasool saying Mr. Trump was leading a “supremacist” movement against “the incumbency, those who are in power,” in South Africa.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations says a host country “may at any time and without having to explain its decision” declare “any member” of a diplomatic mission to be persona non grata, which is Latin for an unwelcome individual. The convention states that in case of such designation, “the sending state shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission.”

Mr. Rubio said on social media last month that he would not attend the meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in South Africa, criticizing the South African hosts for having a focus of the meeting be on “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” Other countries did not follow Mr. Rubio’s boycott. China sent its top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, who held meetings with counterparts from other countries while Mr. Rubio was absent.

Mr. Trump has signed an executive order last month prioritizing the resettlement in the United States of white South African farmers, whom he referred to as “Afrikaner refugees,” whose land had been taken by the government, even though that is not a widespread practice in South Africa. He also ordered the federal government to cut off all aid to South Africa.

Mr. Trump has made aggressive moves to purge diversity initiatives from the government, and administration officials have threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who defy the orders. Judge Adam B. Abelson of the District of Maryland had written in the lower court ruling last month that the orders sought to punish people for constitutionally protected speech.

On Friday, the three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Richmond, Va., found that the Trump administration had “satisfied the factors for a stay” of that order, writing that the orders “are of distinctly limited scope” and “do not purport to establish the illegality of all efforts to advance diversity, equity or inclusion.”

Chief Judge Albert Diaz, who was appointed to the Fourth Circuit by President Barack Obama in 2010, wrote that ruling in the Trump administration’s favor was warranted but pushed back against the attacks on diversity initiatives, saying that “people of good faith who work to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion deserve praise, not opprobrium.”

“When this country embraces true diversity, it acknowledges and respects the social identity of its people,” wrote Judge Diaz, who became the first Hispanic jurist to serve as chief judge of the court in 2023. “When it fosters true equity, it opens opportunities and ensures a level playing field for all. And when its policies are truly inclusive, it creates an environment and culture where everyone is respected and valued.”

He continued, “What could be more American than that?”

Judge Pamela Harris, writing in her own concurring opinion, said that she shared Judge Diaz’s sentiment.

“My vote should not be understood as agreement with the orders’ attack on efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion,” wrote Judge Harris, who was also appointed to the court by Mr. Obama.

But Judge Allison Jones Rushing, who was appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term, used her own concurring opinion to criticize Judge Diaz’s declaration of support for diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Any individual judge’s view on whether certain executive action is good policy is not only irrelevant to fulfilling our duty to adjudicate cases and controversies according to the law, it is an impermissible consideration,” Judge Rushing wrote.

She continued, “A judge’s opinion that D.E.I. programs ‘deserve praise, not opprobrium’ should play absolutely no part in deciding this case.”

But many Democrats, who were stunned and enraged by Mr. Schumer’s stance, argued that it was in fact the spending extension that would clear the way for Mr. Trump’s executive orders and Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to continue to reshape the government, running roughshod over Congress in the process.

Behind the political divide over how best to push back against Mr. Trump was a practical question: Does the White House have more power or less when the government shuts down?

It’s a complicated subject. Here’s what to know:

What happens in a government shutdown?

When the government shuts down, agencies continue essential work, but federal employees and contractors are not paid. Many employees are furloughed until Congress acts to extend new funding.

Federal agencies typically make contingency plans that lay out who should keep working and what programs need to operate during a shutdown. But spending experts said the decisions about what is deemed “necessary” or “essential” ultimately rest with the White House Office of Management and Budget, currently run by Russell T. Vought.

During a shutdown in Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Vought worked to expand the number of federal employees required to work. But he has also made clear his desire to vastly shrink the federal government, culling its work force and trying to claw back congressionally approved funding for government agencies.

Laura Blessing, a fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, said that given the Trump administration’s approach to government, it is not clear what might happen under a shutdown.

What powers does a president have during a shutdown?

Shutdowns give the executive branch wide authority to decide how government should work while it lacks spending authority.

“When there is a government shutdown, the president has almost full flexibility to shut down discretionary spending that he does not consider to be essential,” said Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have already moved unilaterally to shut off programs and in some cases whole agencies they dislike, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development. But doing so can be a cumbersome and time-consuming process, as the Trump administration has learned from the array of lawsuits it has faced in recent weeks.

In a shutdown, the paradigm would shift toward shuttering every federal department, potentially easing the path for the president and his team to decide which programs to prioritize and which to leave languishing without money to operate.

David Super, a professor who researches administrative law at Georgetown University, said Mr. Trump and Mr. Vought might be able to “effectively dictate the sequence of restarting the government” to favor their agenda, leaving federal employees on prolonged furlough in agencies that they oppose.

What happens under the funding extension?

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who had been pushing for a shorter-term funding extension to leave time for Congress to agree on regular spending bills, said on Friday that Republicans’ bill “hands a blank check to Elon Musk and Donald Trump to decide how our constituents’ taxpayer dollars get spent — all while they cut funding working people count on each and every day.”

In regular spending bills, members of Congress give specific directions about how they want federal money to be spent for the year. But temporary extensions, like the one that passed on Friday, only continue current funding levels without including any cuts, increases or limitations on their use.

Many Democrats argued that would give the Trump administration more discretion over federal funds even as it has taken steps to stop the spending of money authorized by Congress.

But Ms. Riedl said that under a temporary extension, presidents were generally expected to stick to the funding levels allocated by Congress, except where they had been explicitly modified.

“The president can’t just eliminate the Department of Education or send all the employees of a certain department home,” Ms. Riedl said. “He still must carry out the program and maintain spending at the required rates.”

Still, the Trump administration has made clear that it does not consider itself bound by Congress’s spending dictates.

“Trump and Musk are going to continue acting illegally no matter what this funding bill says,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a video explaining his opposition. But by extending funding, he added, “Democrats risk putting a kind of bipartisan veneer of endorsement on their campaign to give our government to the billionaires and destroy the rule of law.”

The government asked a federal judge to extend the deadline it had set for Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team to produce internal documents pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request from a public interest legal group. Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency team are being represented in that case by Yaakov M. Roth, an acting assistant attorney general, who made the request in a filing Friday evening.

In support of its request, the government also submitted a declaration by Amy Gleason in which she stated that Elon Musk does not work for the DOGE service and that she is in charge of its operations.

“I do not report to him, and he does not report to me,” the statement said. “To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.”

The move widened an assault by Mr. Trump on some of nation’s most prominent law firms. Legal experts have warned the aggressive campaign sets a dangerous precedent that threatens not just the ability of lawyers to do their jobs, but also the ability of private citizens to obtain lawyers to represent them.

The order said it was intended to end “government sponsorship of harmful activity” at Paul, Weiss and specifically punish one of its former lawyers, Mark F. Pomerantz.

Mr. Trump mentioned Mr. Pomerantz by name in an angry speech Friday at the Justice Department, where he complained about prosecutors and private lawyers who pursued cases against him, calling them “really bad people.” Mr. Trump, in the same speech, claimed he was ending the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, though his move against the firm showed he will continue using his power to exact retribution on his opponents.

Mr. Pomerantz had tried to build a criminal case against Mr. Trump several years ago when he worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The White House announcement called Mr. Pomerantz “an unethical lawyer” who tried to “manufacture a prosecution against President Trump.”

The order also cited a case brought by a Paul, Weiss partner against pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the firm’s diversity policies as reasons for the restrictions.

A spokesperson for the firm said in a statement that Mr. Pomerantz retired from the firm in 2012 and had not been affiliated with it for years.

The spokesperson also noted a ruling this week from a federal judge who temporarily barred the Trump administration from carrying out many of the punishments detailed in an executive order against the Perkins Coie law firm. The rationale behind that Trump order, Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington said, sent “little chills down my spine.”

In the Perkins Coie order, Mr. Trump had sought to block the firm’s lawyers from entering government buildings, conferring with government officials or getting government jobs. During a hearing before Judge Howell this week, a lawyer representing Perkins Coie said the order, were it allowed to stand, would kill the firm.

Mr. Trump said he issued the order because of Perkins Coie’s role representing Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign and because of its connection to a dossier of unsubstantiated allegations against him.

Mr. Trump had previously signed a memo stripping security clearances from any lawyers at a different firm, Covington & Burling, who were involved in representing Jack Smith, the former special counsel who pursued two separate indictments of the president in 2023.

The bill has to pass the House and be signed into law by President Trump. Ms. Collins also said that it had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and by Representative Tom Cole, Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, suggesting the bill’s passage in the Republican-controlled House was likely.

Phil Mendelson, the chairman of the D.C. City Council, said in a statement that his office was working with the district’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, “to garner House support,” adding, “I am confident that we will find a solution to this problem that has been handed to us by Congress.”

In a departure from years of practice, the House resolution, written by Republicans, included the district’s budget in a spending freeze across federal agencies that would keep it at last year’s fiscal levels. D.C. officials repeatedly pointed out in news conferences and meetings with lawmakers that federal payments make up only a tiny fraction of the city’s budget, which relies mostly on locally raised taxes, fees and fines. They also emphasized that this fiscal year’s budget, which the city has been operating on for six months, was approved by Congress in previous resolutions.

To account for the freeze, the city would have been forced to make broad cuts and would most likely have had to lay off many city employees, including teachers and police officers.

The turmoil prompted by that prospect only reinforced the district’s essential vulnerability.

With more than 700,000 residents, the city is more populous than both Vermont and Wyoming, but has no voting representation in Congress, holds little control over its criminal justice system and must submit all local legislation for congressional approval.

This year, some Republican lawmakers and even Mr. Trump threatened to strip the city of what limited self-government it currently has by repealing the 52-year-old Home Rule Act, which allows residents to elect a mayor and a City Council. Such a move would put the district entirely under federal control.

Isabelle Taft contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.

Officials at embassies and in regional bureaus at the State Department, and security specialists at other departments and intelligence agencies, have been reviewing the draft. They are providing comment about whether descriptions of deficiencies in particular countries are accurate or whether there are policy reasons — like not risking disruption to cooperation on some other priority — to reconsider including some.

The draft proposal also included an “orange” list of 10 countries for which travel would be restricted but not cut off. In those cases, affluent business travelers might be allowed to enter, but not people traveling on immigrant or tourist visas.

Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.

When he took office on Jan. 20, Mr. Trump issued an executive order requiring the State Department to identify countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”

He gave the department 60 days to finish a report for the White House with that list, meaning it is due next week. The State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs has taken the lead, and the order said the Justice and Homeland Security Departments and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were to assist with the effort.

Spokespeople at several agencies declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. But the State Department previously said it was following Mr. Trump’s order and was “committed to protecting our nation and its citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process,” while declining to specifically discuss internal deliberations.

The Times and other news outlets reported this month that Afghanistan, which was not part of Mr. Trump’s first-term travel bans but fell to the Taliban when the U.S. withdrew its forces in 2021, was likely to be part of the second-term ban. But the other countries under consideration had been unclear.

It is also not clear whether people with existing visas would be exempted from the ban, or if their visas would be canceled. Nor is it clear whether the administration intends to exempt existing green card holders, who are already approved for lawful permanent residency.

The Trump administration this past week said it had canceled the green card of a Syrian-born former Columbia University graduate student of Palestinian descent, Mahmoud Khalil, because he had led high-profile campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza that the government says were antisemitic, setting off a court fight over the legality of that move.

Some of the countries on the draft red and orange lists were sanctioned by Mr. Trump in his first-term travel bans, but many are new. Some share characteristics with the earlier lists — they are generally Muslim-majority or otherwise nonwhite, poor and have governments that are considered weak or corrupt.

But the reason several others were included was not immediately clear. Bhutan, for example, was proposed for an absolute ban on entry. The small Buddhist and Hindu country is sandwiched between China and India, neither of which were on any of the draft lists.

The proposal to sharply restrict, if not outright ban, visitors from Russia raises a different issue. While the Russian government has a reputation for corruption, Mr. Trump has been trying to reorient U.S. foreign policy in a more Russia-friendly direction.

A decision to include Venezuela could also disrupt a nascent thaw in relations that has been useful to Mr. Trump’s separate efforts to deport undocumented migrants.

The proposal also includes a draft “yellow” list of 22 countries that would be given 60 days to clear up perceived deficiencies, with the threat of being moved onto one of the other lists if they did not comply.

Such issues could include failing to share with the United States information about incoming travelers, purportedly inadequate security practices for issuing passports, or the selling of citizenship to people from banned countries, which could serve as a loophole around the restrictions.

That list, the officials said, included Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Vanuatu and Zimbabwe.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, courts blocked the government from enforcing the first two versions of his travel ban, but the Supreme Court eventually permitted a rewritten ban — one that banned citizens from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim — to take effect. The list later evolved.

Soon after he became president in January 2021, Joseph R. Biden Jr. issued a proclamation revoking Mr. Trump’s travel bans, calling them “a stain on our national conscience” and “inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.”

Mr. Trump’s executive order in January said he would revive the bans in order to protect American citizens “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Edward Wong contributed reporting from Washington.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Friday that he was expelling the ambassador to the United States from South Africa, Ebrahim Rasool. Rubio wrote on social media that the ambassador was a “race-baiting politician who hates America” and President Trump. He added that “we have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.” Rubio made his comments above a repost of an article from the right-leaning outlet, Breitbart News, on remarks Rasool made on Friday at an institute in Johannesburg. The article highlighted Rasool saying that Trump was leading a “supremacist” movement against “the incumbency.”

Rubio said on social media last month that he would not attend the meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in South Africa, criticizing the South African hosts for having a focus of the meeting be on “solidarity, equality and sustainability.” Other countries did not follow Rubio’s boycott. China sent its top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, who held meetings with counterparts from other countries while Rubio was absent.

Before final passage of the funding bill, the Senate will take up — and almost certainly defeat — four proposed amendments, three of which Schumer and Democrats demanded in exchange for allowing the measure to move forward. The first to be considered and rejected was a proposal from Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, to restore funding for tax enforcement. Republicans have been pushing to reduce spending at the I.R.S. for two years.