As the US Supreme Court girds for Trump cases, can it be an 'effective firewall'?
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A federal judge on Friday declined to block Elon Musk's government cost-cutting department from accessing the U.S. Department of Labor's systems, an initial setback for the government employee unions resisting his efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
The temporary ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., is the first step in a lawsuit against the Labor Department by one of the largest U.S. labor unions, which alleges billionaire Musk could obtain sensitive information about investigations into his own companies and competitors by accessing government computer systems.
Bates ruled that "although the Court harbors concerns about defendants’ alleged conduct," the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) had not shown it was harmed by the Labor Department's actions.
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler said in a statement that the decision was "a setback, but not a defeat," and that the union would provide more evidence to support its claims. A Department of Labor spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent late on Friday.
President Donald Trump has deputized Musk, the world's richest person and owner of electric vehicle company Tesla (TSLA.O, opens new tab, space technology company SpaceX and other businesses, with leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to identify fraud and waste in the government.
Musk's efforts have alarmed lawmakers and advocacy groups who say he is overstepping his authority by seeking to dismantle agencies responsible for critical government programs and fire federal workers en masse.
Another group of federal employee unions and retirees has sued the Treasury Department to block what it says is the unlawful transmission of sensitive payment records to DOGE personnel. Treasury temporarily agreed on Wednesday not to give further access while the case plays out.
In the Labor Department lawsuit, the AFL-CIO asked the court to block what it said was Musk's imminent plan to access department systems.
The union, which represents roughly 800,000 government workers, said that would potentially give Musk access to non-public information from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's probes into SpaceX, Tesla and his tunneling company, The Boring Company, as well as investigations into his competitors.
The union also said that in the absence of court intervention, DOGE could access Bureau of Labor Statistics data about the health of the economy and sensitive information about government employees, including the identities of those who have filed worker compensation claims or sought protection for wage and hour complaints.
The White House has said Musk will recuse himself from matters in which he has a conflict of interest. As a so-called special government employee, he is subject to some but not all conflict-of-interest and ethics rules for federal workers.
Musk's rapid takeover of U.S. government agencies has enabled the South African-born businessman to exert unprecedented control over America's 2.2-million-member federal workforce and begin a dramatic reshaping of government.
Musk has already moved to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and says USAID is canceling scores of government consulting contracts and underutilized leases.
A U.S. judge on Friday temporarily allowed roughly 2,700 U.S. Agency for International Development employees put on leave by President Donald Trump's administration to go back to work, pausing aspects of a plan to dismantle the agency.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, who was nominated by Trump during his first term, partially granted a request from the largest U.S. government workers' union and an association of foreign service workers who sued to stop the administration's efforts to close the agency.
Nichols's order, which will be in effect until February 14, blocks the Trump administration from implementing plans to place about 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave beginning on Saturday and reinstates some 500 employees who had already been furloughed.
It also bars the administration from relocating USAID humanitarian workers stationed outside the United States.
Nichols will consider a request for a longer-term pause at a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. He wrote in the order that the unions had made a "strong showing of irreparable harm" if the court did not intervene.
Nichols rejected other requests from the unions to reopen USAID buildings and restore funding for agency grants and contracts.
The administration in a notice sent to the foreign aid agency's workers on Thursday said it will keep 611 essential workers on board at USAID out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000.
"The major reduction in force, as well as the closure of offices, the forced relocation of these individuals were all done more than the executive’s authority in violation of the separation of powers," Karla Gilbride, a lawyer for the unions, said at a court hearing earlier on Friday.
A Justice Department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USAID employees would be put on paid leave under the administration's plans, adding that 500 had already been placed on leave.
"The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID," Shumate said.
Trump in a post on Truth Social on Friday accused USAID - without evidence - of corruption and spending money fraudulently.
He said the corruption at USAID "IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!"
Hours after he was inaugurated on January 20, Trump ordered all U.S. foreign aid be paused to ensure it is aligned with his "America First" policy. Chaos has since consumed USAID, which distributes billions of dollars of humanitarian aid around the world.
The State Department issued worldwide stop-work directives after the executive order was issued, effectively freezing all foreign aid with the exception of emergency food assistance. That brought USAID programs covering lifesaving aid across the globe to a grinding halt, in a move that experts warned risked killing people.
The gutting of the agency has largely been overseen by businessman Elon Musk, the world's richest man and a close Trump ally spearheading the president's effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
In the 2023 fiscal year, the United States disbursed, partly via USAID, $72 billion of aid worldwide on everything from women's health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV/AIDS treatments, energy security, and anti-corruption work.
It provided 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024, yet that represents less than 1% of its total budget.
The modern economy relies on facts and figures, many of them supplied by the U.S. government. It’s why President Donald Trump’s chaoticpurgeof some data and the temporary disappearance of other information from official websites is cause for so much concern beyond just any politically or ideologically motivated distortions.
Every industry counts on the collecting and tabulating done by federal agencies in some way. Oil producers like Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), open new tab rely on Energy Information Administration forecasts, investors respond to monthly job reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and advertisers design marketing campaigns based on Census data. Large-language artificial intelligence models are being fed all of it.
Big Data also keeps getting bigger in significance. Businesses especially dependent on government-produced statistics, such as consultants and scientists, accounted for some $750 billion of revenue in 2022, about twice as much as a decade earlier, according to an analysis conducted by the Department of Commerce. The growth far outpaces that of the underlying economy, implying such companies contribute even more – roughly 3% – to national output.
Industries that depend heavily on government data, such as internet publishing and web search, grew rapidly over the decade ending in 2022.
When information like National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration figures broken down by Census tract vanishes, it does more than satisfy climate-change deniers. It makes it harder for insurers, for example, to model wildfire exposure risks, and could lead to less coverage or higher premiums.
The government gathers facts like rainfall and wind speeds because it’s more efficient to make it available to all. The private sector can, and does, conduct some of the same work, but also limits access to the findings to obtain a competitive edge. Shrinking the shared benefit creates an economic loss for society. It’s why most U.S. weather forecasts are based on NOAA data.
Trust, reliability, and breadth are also factors. Take the official monthly jobs report, the latest of which was released on Friday. The comparable corporate version, the ADP National Employment Report, doesn’t track public-sector workforces.
Following the erasure of federal health website pages on subjects ranging from gay rights to HIV at Trump’s behest, Democrats are seeking an investigation into whether Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has illegal access to data. Senator Patty Murray expressed concern that Musk might scrub, opens new tab jobs numbers and unions have sued, opens new tab to prevent it. The president routinely accused, opens new tab the jobs agency of lying in the past.
If government data becomes less available, trusted, or dependable, then “garbage in” will increasingly become the norm. And as every computer scientist knows, that inevitably leads to garbage out.
One of the people working with billionaire Elon Musk in his efforts to overhaul the U.S. government is a Berkeley-educated computer scientist who has boosted white supremacists and misogynists online.
Gavin Kliger lists his job on LinkedIn as "Special Advisor to the Director" at the Office of Personnel Management, which has been spearheading Musk's efforts to shrink the federal workforce. His USAID email address was copied on a message reviewed by Reuters that was sent to staffers at the international aid agency on Monday. It urged them to stay home while the agency was being shut down.
He graduated in 2020 from the University of California, Berkeley with a 3.95 grade point average and degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, according to his LinkedIn profile. Reuters confirmed his attendance at Berkeley but was unable to verify other details in his profile.
Kliger is one of about a dozen men identified by Reuters and other news outlets who have been recruited by Musk and his DOGE office to reshape the federal government. Reuters could not determine the importance of Kliger's role at OPM.
In social media posts between October 2024 and January, Kliger has voiced controversial views and reposted content from white supremacist Nick Fuentes and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate.
An OPM spokeswoman declined to comment on Kliger's posts. Kliger did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and text. Following Reuters' request for comment on Thursday evening, public access to Kliger's X account was blocked.
In response to a post about New York Mayor Eric Adams possibly shutting down a migrant shelter in November, Kliger wrote: "Just leave them be for a few more months. Will be much more convenient to deport them all if they are in one spot."
Kliger has reposted comments from white supremacist Fuentes, who has at times been banned from social media platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter for hate speech.
Kliger shared a December 4 post from Fuentes' X account. Kliger has since unshared the post, but Reuters examined a copy of the original report via the Internet Archive.
In the post on X, Fuentes mocks a post praising a photo of an apparently white couple pictured with two light-skinned children and a dark-skinned baby. In his post, Fuentes referred to "adopted Black kids", denigrating the apparent interracial adoption. He also used the word "huzz", a pejorative term for women. Reuters could not immediately establish the identity or ethnicity of the people depicted. Fuentes did not respond to a request for comment on the post by email.
Kliger has also reposted social media influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate.
The British-American former kickboxer is being investigated by Romanian prosecutors for human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering and has since founded a nativist British political party. Tate has denied wrongdoing.
The post, shared by Kliger, exhorts foreigners to "respect British culture, standards of hygiene and social norms. You operate within our parameters ... Problem? leave ... Multiple complaints of the contrary? Visa revoked."
Another Department of Government Efficiency staffer, Marko Elez, quit on Thursday amid questions from the Wall Street Journal about links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics, according to the Journal's subsequently published story. Reuters could not determine how Elez, Kliger, or any of the individuals working with Musk to slash government and staffing, were selected for their jobs.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance on Friday said Elez should get his job back.
Also on Friday, the ex-employer of Edward Coristine, another member of the DOGE team, disclosed that Coristine had been fired from a previous job amid a leak investigation.
In a statement in response to a query from Reuters on Coristine's employment, Arizona-based network monitoring company Path Network said it could confirm that Coristine's "brief contract" had been "terminated after the conclusion of an internal investigation into the leaking of proprietary company information that coincided with his tenure."
Coristine didn't immediately respond to a request seeking comment. His dismissal from Path was first reported by Bloomberg.
A White House official told Reuters on Wednesday that Musk and his engineers have appropriate security clearances and are operating in "full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities."
President Donald Trump's sweeping assertions of executive power during his first weeks back in office appear headed toward U.S. Supreme Court showdowns, but it remains an open question whether or how much the justices might act to check his authority.
Since taking office on January 20, Trump's views of presidential authority appear far less restrained than those of his White House predecessors, according to legal scholars, citing actions such as seeking to restrict birthright citizenship, withholding funding appropriated by Congress, and removing heads of independent federal agencies.
"The unifying theme is an extreme view of presidential power unlike anything we have seen before," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law.
Trump prevailed in three major cases last year at the Supreme Court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices - Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - he appointed during his first term as president. The court has moved U.S. law steadily rightward with Trump's picks on the bench.
"The Trump administration is gambling that the court won't be an effective firewall, and the administration has decent odds on its side," Harvard Law Professor Mark Tushnet said.
Trump's actions have prompted dozens of lawsuits now proceeding through lower courts. They involve challenges to actions such as his hardline steps on immigration, federal workforce protections, the legal status of an entity created by Trump and led by billionaire Elon Musk dedicated to slashing the U.S. government, and his moves to restrict transgender rights.
The Supreme Court could be called upon in the coming weeks or months to act in a challenge to Trump's policies, depending on how quickly appeals move through the lower courts.
Some of the plaintiffs have accused Trump of usurping the authority of Congress, as set out in the U.S. Constitution. While Trump's fellow Republicans who control Congress have offered scant resistance, these actions by Trump may be vulnerable to being declared invalid by the judiciary, according to University of Illinois Chicago law professor Steve Schwinn.
Schwinn cited Trump's efforts to unilaterally shut down federal government agencies - which are created, funded and given authority by Congress - and his attempt to cut off federal spending appropriated by U.S. lawmakers.
"These efforts most clearly encroach on congressional authority, and are least obviously supportable by the president's Article II powers," Schwinn said, referring to the Constitution's language delineating presidential authority.
Federal judges acted to halt Trump's attempt to freeze federal grants, loans, and other financial assistance even after the White House's Office of Management and Budget rescinded its wide-ranging directive announcing the funding freeze.
Boston University School of Law professor Robert Tsai said Trump would be likely to lose if that dispute comes before the Supreme Court. Weighing against Trump is the Constitution's separation of powers between the U.S. government's executive and legislative branches, as well as federal law and the Supreme Court's own prior decisions, Tsai said.
"I can easily imagine five votes to brush him back on this," Tsai said, referring to the majority threshold on the court.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
Lower courts have blocked for an indefinite period Trump's attempt to narrow birthright citizenship. Trump had directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
Democratic-led states and other plaintiffs have argued that Trump's order violates a right enshrined in the Constitution's 14th Amendment that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
The consensus among scholars interviewed by Reuters was that the Supreme Court likely would invalidate Trump's birthright citizenship action if the case reached the justices.
"I think that Trump will lose," said John Yoo, who served as a Justice Department lawyer under Republican former President George W. Bush and is now a professor at UC Berkeley School of Law.
"The original understanding of the 14th Amendment, and subsequent Supreme Court opinions and government practice, require that everyone born in the United States become a citizen," Yoo said.
Some scholars were less certain, predicting that at least some of the conservative justices might be open to narrowing the Supreme Court's 1898 decision in a case called United States v. Wong Kim Ark. That ruling long has been understood to mean that children born in the United States to non-citizen parents are entitled to American citizenship.
Trump's Justice Department has argued that the court's ruling was narrower, applying to children whose parents had a "permanent domicile and residence in the United States."
Cornell Law School professor Gautam Hans said, "I would hope that the Supreme Court would cleanly and categorically stop the birthright citizenship executive order, but I have learned better than to have confidence in this court."
Hans said his view is that Trump's actions in his first weeks in office pose a constitutional crisis representing "the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War" of 1861-1865 when states that allowed slavery rebelled.
"I feel a bit foolish in making such a sweeping claim, but I cannot think of another more dire moment," Hans said.
The most consequential of Trump's three victories at the court last year was a ruling authored by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts that embraced Trump's request for immunity after he was indicted on federal criminal charges involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. It was the first time the court recognized any degree of presidential immunity from prosecution. The ruling gave former presidents broad immunity for official acts taken in office.
Two conservative justices would have to side against Trump in order for the court to rule against him in any case decided by the nine justices, assuming its three liberal members also oppose him. Trump would be able over the next four years to make fresh lifetime appointments to the court if any current members depart.
Some judges in lower courts have voiced alarm over Trump's vision of his authority.
"It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals," Seattle-based U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said in issuing a nationwide injunction against Trump on birthright citizenship on Thursday. "The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain."
Scholars said Trump could prevail in some of the disputes over his executive orders that could reach the Supreme Court.
A former member of the National Labor Relations Board has argued in a lawsuit that in firing her Trump violated a federal law that allows a president to oust a board member only for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, and no other cause.
The dispute could give the Supreme Court a chance to reassess its own 1935 precedent that has limited a president's ability to fire certain agency heads. Some of the justices have signaled a willingness to rein in or perhaps overturn that ruling, in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States.
"Given what a majority of the court has recently said about Humphrey's Executor, Trump might win," Tushnet said.
Yoo said that Trump's efforts to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from government operations are the "most secure" among the president's executive actions being challenged.
"If past presidents could establish DEI and affirmative action in government offices, then the current president can eliminate the programs," Yoo added.
Yoo said that Trump's first weeks back in office showed him exercising a broad conception of executive power, "one that draws on precedents from times of crisis and emergency in American history." For instance, Trump declared a national emergency, opens new tab concerning illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexican border, though critics have questioned whether emergency circumstances genuinely exist warranting the move.
"In those periods, presidential power expands - this was the very purpose that the Framers understood to be the purpose of a single chief executive," Yoo added, referring to the 18th-century authors of the Constitution. "The question is whether the United States is truly facing emergency circumstances."
For years, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in suburban Indianapolis has wanted to partner with federal immigration authorities to identify and detain immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing charges.
President Joe Biden’s administration never returned its calls, the sheriff’s office said. But as President Donald Trump cracks down on illegal immigration, Hamilton County deputies soon could become the first in Indiana empowered to carry out federal immigration duties and one of many nationally that Trump’s administration hopes to enlist.
“We definitely are joining,” Chief Deputy John Lowes told The Associated Press. “We want to collaborate with ICE to make sure we keep our community safe.”
Under Trump, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement is reviving and expanding a decades-old program that trains local law officers to interrogate immigrants in their custody and detain them for potential deportation. The 287(g) program — named for a section of the 1996 law that created it — currently applies only to those already jailed or imprisoned on charges.
But Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, recently told sheriffs that he wants to expand it to include local task forces that can make arrests on the streets, reviving a model that former President Barrack Obama discontinued amid concerns about racial profiling. It’s unclear whether that could allow local officers to stop people solely to check their immigration status.
On Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the Florida Highway Patrol had struck an agreement with ICE to interrogate, arrest and detain immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally and deliver them to federal authorities.
The arrangement will help “fulfill the president’s mission to effectuate the largest deportation program in American history,” DeSantis said.
Advocates for immigrants, meanwhile, are raising alarm about new pacts that put local law officers on immigration enforcement.
“All of these agreements, in practice, have the same track record of racial profiling, of sweeping in U.S. citizens or people who have lawful status, of having a chilling effect in terms of communities reporting crime to local law enforcement agencies,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the nonprofit American Immigration Council.
In the early 2000s, many of the initial participants in the 287(g) program had agreements that allowed them to enforce immigration laws in their communities, not just their jails. But problems arose in several places, including Arizona.
In 2011, a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that deputies in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, had engaged in a pattern of racial profiling, unlawful stops and arrests of Latinos. The Department of Homeland Security ended its agreement with the county.
The program became “the hallmark of far-right, anti-immigrant sheriffs” as a means “to feed people on the basis of their ethnicity into the deportation machine,” asserted Lena Graber, senior staff attorney at the nonprofit Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
In recent years, ICE has offered two types of 287(g) agreements to law enforcement agencies. One model requires four weeks of training and allows local officers to question suspected noncitizens who are jailed on other charges and detain them for ICE. The other model, which Trump launched during his first term, requires just eight hours of training and only allows local officers to serve federal immigration warrants.
As of December, ICE had 135 agreements with sheriff’s offices, police departments, and prison systems in 21 states, with requests pending from 35 others. Two-thirds of the agreements were in just three states — Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. But no agreements had been signed during Biden’s four years as president, according to ICE data.
On his first day back in office, Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to maximize 287(g) agreements for local law officers to investigate, apprehend,d and detain immigrants. At a recent National Sheriffs’ Association conference, Homan said the administration is looking to lighten detention facility regulations and shorten the training to encourage greater collaboration with federal immigration officials.
The association’s president, Kieran Donahue, applauded the announcement.
“There’s going to be local sheriffs’ offices throughout the country, no question, they’re going to sign onto this program,” Donahue told the AP.
But Donahue is not planning to sign up his own department in Canyon County, Idaho.
“I don’t have that kind of manpower,” he said, adding: “I have no bed space in my facility. Zero.”
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2002 was the first to sign a 287(g) agreement with the federal government, running a task force for immigration enforcement. Twenty years later, Florida became the first state to require all local agencies with county jails to join the program or inform the state why they couldn’t.
After a Venezuelan man who was illegally in the U.S. killed University of Georgia student Laken Riley, Georgia passed a law last year requiring local law enforcement agencies to apply for the program.
This year, Republican lawmakers in about a dozen states are seeking to require or incentivize cooperative agreements with ICE. One measure is sponsored by Texas state Rep. David Spiller, a Republican who also authored a law allowing any law enforcement officer to arrest migrants suspected of entering the country illegally. That law is on hold amid a legal challenge.
Spiller said mandatory participation in ICE programs is essential.
“President Trump and border czar Homan cannot remove and deport all the people that are a public safety threat to our state and our nation over the next year and a half without the help of our local law enforcement,” Spiller said.
Already this year, Florida lawmakers have passed legislation that would allow millions of dollars for local immigration enforcement efforts. Legislation passed in Tennessee would direct the state to apply for the 287(g) program and authorize grants for local agencies that join.
Legislation creating a state grant program for 287(g) participants also passed the Indiana Senate this week and is pending in the House. Democratic state Sen. Rodney Pol called it a “very, very dangerous” and “very, very disturbing” proposal.
“We’re putting too much on people, particularly police officers, that are going to be put into situations where they’re going to have to break up their communities,” Pol said.
But Lowes said Hamilton County deputies plan to focus only on people who are already in jail. Last year, he said, the jail booked over 500 people believed to be noncitizens on charges that included driving while intoxicated, drug possession, theft, burglary, sexual battery, and other offenses. It’s unclear how many were in the country illegally, but ICE became involved in 64 of those cases, he said.
“We believe that this program will help us see a reduction in some of those crimes and will help us get some of the people out of our community that are committing crimes that endanger our safety,” Lowes said.
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity,y and inclusion initiatives in programs receiving federal money has thrown into doubt the future of research Kendra Dahmer has been doing on intestinal parasites in India and Benin.
Dahmer, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, has a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the single largest public funder of biomedical research in the world.
The grant is supposed to cover her research through the summer of 2026, but now she wonders if that will be possible. She received diversity-based funding as the first college graduate in her family and a woman in science and, more broadly, she is uncertain how Trump’s anti-DEI executive order could affect support for her areas of study.
“There’s also this aspect of research that funds specific studies in specific populations that are now being deemed DEI,” Dahmer said. “So, like HIV research in Africa may be deemed DEI, malaria research, which also happens in low and middle-income countries, may be considered DEI. And these are really important diseases that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.”
Two days after Trump signed the executive order on DEI on Jan. 21 researchers became even more alarmed when the White House called for a funding freeze to conduct an ideological review of all federal grants and loans. After days of chaos and legal wrangling, two judges intervened and the administration rescinded the freeze. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, which fund a large chunk of research in the country, this week began releasing grants.
But that hasn’t eased the fears of scientists and researchers whose work is funded by federal grants. The NSF said it is still conducting a review of “projects, programs, and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.” It’s not yet clear what may happen to new and existing NIH grants either.
Universities, which received almost $60 billion for research in the 2023 fiscal year, have been mostly quiet, explaining in statements to their staff and students they are still trying to clarify the executive order’s implications for their research funding. Meantime, they are navigating the order’s impact on their own institutional policies supporting underrepresented students.
The University of California said in a statement it is “evaluating recent executive orders issued by President Trump and the subsequent agency guidance to understand their potential impact on our communities.”
Even though there is no clarity on the new policies yet, some projects already have been put on hold amid uncertainty over the future of research touching on issues related to diversity, said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors.
Some of the studies already being halted include research on artificial intelligence and how racism can be coded into systems, he said. Other projects Wolfson has heard about getting stopped include research on health equity and studies on the urban literacy rate as it relates to class in places with large concentrations of Black people.
“I think the people who are making these decisions are very clear that they want to create a society that’s based on deep-set inequities that are hard baked and don’t transform whether that’s around race, whether that’s around class, whether that’s around gender,” he said.
The Education Department did not respond to an email message seeking comment.
Threats to funding for research related to DEI could eliminate a lifeline for historically Black colleges and universities, which are already significantly underfunded compared to predominantly white institutions.
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, the largest HBCU in the country, has been on a yearslong mission to become one of the first to reach R1 status — a distinction from the Carnegie Foundation that denotes a university as having high research activity, but the president’s intervention on federal funding could slow that down, said Joseph Graves, a biology professor. As it is, biology department students have to conduct research in hats and gloves during the winter because of a lack of heat in the old building, he said.
New scrutiny on federal research grants could also hurt students at HBCUs who have federally funded fellowships for research, Graves said. Those scholarships, which could be at risk, allow minority students to pursue opportunities they might not have been able to afford.
The Trump administration’s perception of diversity, equity and inclusion could make HBCUs a target because of its high population of minority students, Graves said.
“They will look at our excellence in doing work that is changing the demography of science, and they will attack it as DEI,” Graves said. “Whatever we do, we’re doing DEI whether they like it or not.”
President Donald Trump said Friday that he is firing members of the board of trustees for the Kennedy Center and naming himself chairman.
He also indicated that he would be dictating programming at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, specifically declaring that he’d put an end to events featuring performers in drag.
Trump’s announcement came as the new president has bulldozed his way across official Washington during the first weeks of his second term, trying to shutter federal agencies, freeze spending, and end diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the government.
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote on his social media website.
“We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
In a statement late Friday on its website, the Kennedy Center said it was aware of Trump’s post. “We have received no official communications from the White House regarding changes to our board of trustees,” the statement said. “We are aware that some members of our board have received termination notices from the administration.”
The statement continued: “Per the Center’s governance established by Congress in 1958, the chair of the board of trustees is appointed by the Center’s board members. There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members; however, this would be the first time such action has been taken with the Kennedy Center’s board.”
Unlike former President Joe Biden and other commanders in chief through the decades, Trump did not attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies during his first term, held at the performing arts venue in Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood that opened in 1971.
Shortly after Trump’s post, the Kennedy Center website began experiencing technical difficulties. Visitors got a message reading “We are experiencing high traffic” and were redirected to a “waiting room” that listed how many hundreds of people were trying to access the site ahead of them.
Trump suggested in his post that he would be implementing some changes to the center’s performance schedule, noting that last year “the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
According to its website, the center in July hosted a preshow titled “A Drag Salute to Divas” and a November “Drag Brunch.”
In his post, Trump did not clarify which board of trustee members he would be terminating besides the current chairman, philanthropist David Rubenstein. The board often features political powerbrokers and major donors and is currently made up of members from both sides of the aisle.
Rubenstein was first elected to the post in 2010 and reelected each year since that time. Also, the principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, Rubenstein was originally appointed to the Kennedy Center board by President George W. Bush and subsequently reappointed by President Barack Obama and Biden.
The current board features Biden’s White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, as well as Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime ally, and Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama adviser. The treasurer of the center’s board of trustees is television producer Shonda Rhimes, who hosted fundraisers for Biden before he abandoned his reelection bid last summer.
But the current board also features Trump allies, including Pam Bondi, the new president’s recently confirmed attorney general, and Lee Greenwood, whose song “God Bless the USA,” was the unofficial anthem of Trump’s presidential campaign.
During his first term in 2019, Trump announced that he was tapping actor Jon Voight, a longtime supporter, to the board, along with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who he’s picked as U.S. ambassador to Israel this time.
Nineteen Democratic attorneys general sued President Donald Trump on Friday to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.
The case, filed in federal court in New York City, alleges the Trump administration allowed Musk’s team access to the Treasury Department’s central payment system in violation of federal law.
The payment system handles tax refunds, Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits, and much more, sending out trillions of dollars every year while containing an expansive network of Americans’ personal and financial data.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, was created to discover and eliminate what the Trump administration has deemed to be wasteful government spending. DOGE’s access to Treasury records, as well as its inspection of various government agencies, has ignited widespread concern among critics over the increasing power of Musk, while supporters have cheered at the idea of reining in bloated government finances.
Musk has made fun of criticism of DOGE on his X social media platform while saying it is saving taxpayers millions of dollars.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office filed the lawsuit, said DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s data raises security problems and the possibility of an illegal freeze in federal funds.
“This unelected group, led by the world’s richest man, is not authorized to have this information, and they explicitly sought this unauthorized access to illegally block payments that millions of Americans rely on, payments for health care, child care, and other essential programs,” James said in a video message released by her office.
James, a Democrat who has been one of Trump’s chief antagonists, said the president does not have the power to give away American’s private information to anyone he chooses, and he cannot cut federal payments approved by Congress.
Also on the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The suit alleges that DOGE’s access to the Treasury records could interfere with funding already appropriated by Congress, which would exceed the Treasury Department’s statutory authority. The case also argues that the DOGE access violates federal administrative law and the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.
It also accuses Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of changing the department’s longstanding policy for protecting sensitive personally identifiable information and financial information to allow Musk’s DOGE team access to its payment systems.
“This decision failed to account for legal obligations to protect such data and ignored the privacy expectations of federal fund recipients,” including states, veterans, retirees, and taxpayers, the lawsuit says.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said it’s not clear what DOGE is doing with the information in the Treasury systems.
“This is the largest data breach in American history,” Tong said in a statement. “DOGE is an unlawfully constituted band of renegade tech bros combing through confidential records, sensitive data, and critical payment systems. What could go wrong?”
The Treasury Department has said the review is about assessing the integrity of the system and that no changes are being made. According to two people familiar with the process, Musk’s team began its inquiry by looking for ways to suspend payments made by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump and Musk are attempting to dismantle. The two people spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Separately, Democratic lawmakers are seeking a Treasury Department investigation of DOGE’s access to the government’s payment system.
Also, labor unions and advocacy groups have sued to block the payments system review over concerns about its legality. A judge in Washington on Thursday temporarily restricted access to two employees with “read-only” privileges.
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