The Latest: Judge declines to block Musk and DOGE from accessing federal data or laying off workers
A federal judge refused Tuesday to immediately block billionaire Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs. While U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said there are legitimate questions about Musk’s authority, she said there isn’t evidence of the kind of grave legal harm that would justify a temporary restraining order.
The Trump administration has maintained that layoffs are coming from agency heads, and it asserted that Musk isn’t directly running DOGE’s day-to-day operations. The decision came in a lawsuit filed by 14 Democratic states challenging DOGE’s authority to access sensitive government data.
Here's the latest:
After the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston abruptly closed Tuesday afternoon with a sign on its door blaming an “executive order,” the library said the closure was due to federal layoffs.
“The sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library forced the museum to close today,” the library said in a statement. “As the Foundation that supports the JFK Library, we are devastated by this news and will continue to support our colleagues and the Library.”
The library's website says it will reopen Wednesday.
Catholic bishops have sued the Trump administration over its abrupt halt to funding of refugee resettlement, calling the action unlawful and harmful to newly arrived refugees and to the nation’s largest private resettlement program.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the administration, by withholding millions even for reimbursements of costs incurred before the sudden cut-off of funding, violates various laws and the constitutional provision giving the power of the purse to Congress, which already approved the funding.
The conference’s Migration and Refugee Services has sent layoff notices to 50 workers, more than half its staff, with additional cuts expected in local Catholic Charities offices that partner with the national office, the lawsuit said.
“The Catholic Church always works to uphold the common good of all and promote the dignity of the human person, especially the most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB. “That includes the unborn, the poor, the stranger, the elderly and infirm, and migrants.” The funding suspension prevents the church from doing so, he said.
▶ Read more about the Catholic bishops’ lawsuit
In a wide-ranging interview on Fox News, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “American taxpayers don’t have to be concerned about any of this,” when asked about DOGE access to the Treasury’s payment systems.
The Trump administration is facing lawsuits brought by labor unions and advocacy groups concerned about privacy and constitutional law issues related to DOGE members’ access to Treasury systems.
“I think there may be some real fraud here,” Bessent said in reference to DOGE’s attempts to root out waste in government spending.
He reiterated the Trump administration’s plans to abolish the penny.
“President Trump wants to make the penny extinct — it’s going soon,” Bessent said.
He also said of the costs borne from Trump’s tariffs plan that “very little” will be passed onto American consumers.
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston abruptly closed Tuesday afternoon, with a sign on its door blaming an “executive order.” Its website later posted it would reopen Wednesday.
According to local media reports, staff ushered guests out around 2 p.m. The paper sign taped to the glass doors read, “Due to the executive order, the JFK Library will be closed until further notice.”
It’s unclear what executive order the sign was referring to.
The library’s website ran a red banner across the top announcing the indefinite closure, with no further details. Early Tuesday evening, it changed to read, “The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum will reopen on Wednesday February 19.”
The National Archives and Records Administration, which administers the 16 presidential libraries nationwide, didn’t immediately comment.
DOGE staff were at the Pentagon on Tuesday and are receiving lists of their probationary employees, three U.S. officials told the Associated Press.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
It’s not clear whether all of the personnel on the lists will be let go. They might instead be exempted due to the critical nature of some of their work. The affected personnel would include defense civilians who are still new to their jobs, not uniformed military personnel.
The Trump administration has fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government.
The firings weren’t publicly announced but were confirmed by Democratic senators and House members. They have been a part of a chaotic rollout of an aggressive program to eliminate thousands of federal jobs plan led by Musk and DOGE.
Park advocates say the permanent staff cuts will leave hundreds of national parks understaffed and facing tough decisions about operating hours, public safety and resource protection.
▶ Read more about National Park Service layoffs
Three transgender women who were assigned to female prisons before Trump took office can’t be moved to men’s prisons, a judge ruled Tuesday. They must also continue to be provided hormone therapy.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction extending his prior ruling that spares the three trans women from Trump’s executive order rolling back protections for transgender people across the country.
Lamberth, who issued a temporary restraining order Feb. 4, said the injunction will remain in effect pending further order of the court. The judge ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to continue their “housing status and medical care” as they existed immediately prior to Jan. 20, Trump’s first day back in the White House and the day he signed the executive order.
The ruling only applies to the three trans women involved in the Washington case, who were identified in court papers by pseudonyms Jane, Mary and Sara Doe. Lamberth noted at a hearing that only about 16 transgender women are housed in female penitentiaries.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s prestigious Laboratory Leadership Service was hit hard during the layoffs coming to many federal departments, according to five CDC officials who spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the cuts.
The fellowship program was created about 10 years ago to help the CDC remedy embarrassing lab-safety failures.
The cuts may not have an immediate impact, but they likely will haunt the nation in the months to come, said Stephan Monroe, a former CDC official who oversaw the reform of the agency’s lab services.
▶ Read more about layoffs at the CDC
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Associated Press reporter Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.
Jim Jones, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration division responsible for overseeing food chemicals and safety issues, resigned Monday, citing sweeping Trump administration staff cuts.
Jones cited the “indiscriminate firing” of 89 staff in FDA’s Human Foods Program, including 10 chemical safety staff hired to review potentially unsafe ingredients. Jones confirmed his resignation to The Associated Press and released a copy of a letter sent to Acting FDA Commissioner Sara Brenner.
Jones, who joined the agency in 2023, called the cuts “beyond short sighted” and said it would have been “fruitless” for him to continue.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has emphasized the need to remove chemicals and other additives from food, but Jones said cutting staff will undermine that effort.
“Their termination will be one more roadblock to achieving the Secretary’s stated objectives of making America healthy again,” he wrote.
A federal judge says he’ll decide “sooner rather than later” whether to temporarily block the Trump administration’s mass layoff of federal workers while a lawsuit brought by five unions moves forward.
During a hearing Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the case may ultimately hinge on whether enough people were terminated to thwart the purposes that Congress had in mind when authorizing agency funding.
“You have to admit that at some point, a certain number of firings would be tantamount to not using a certain amount of funds that Congress has appropriated,” Cooper said.
The union groups representing hundreds of thousands of federal workers say Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce conflicts with Congress’ power to shape the size and direction of agencies through funding decisions, as well as laws detailing exactly how such layoffs must be carried out.
Attorneys for the Trump administration say the unions failed to show that they were facing the kind of irreparable, immediate harm that would justify an emergency stopping layoffs.
Ukraine has had a seat at the negotiating table for three years and the war hasn’t ended, Trump said, not mentioning that Russia has also failed to end the war it began when it invaded its neighbor.
“A half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives,” Trump said, echoing his frequent claim that he could have prevented the Russian invasion.
Trump signed an executive order that an aide said “reestablishes the long-standing norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is.” The order comes as Trump allies question court rulings blocking some of his initiatives and critics worry his administration will disregard judicial orders.
Trump also signed a presidential memorandum that would require federal agencies to report waste, fraud and abuse that’s uncovered and details of programs that are eliminated. An aide described it as “imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the executive order protecting access to in vitro fertilization in a social media post minutes before Trump appeared at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.
“The Order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” Leavitt wrote in a post on the social platform X.
Neither Leavitt nor a White House fact sheet offered details about how the executive order would achieve that goal. The administration would develop recommendations, including possible legislation, Leavitt said.
Access to fertility treatments was a flashpoint in last year’s campaign. Kamala Harris and other Democrats warned that reproductive rights were at risk in the U.S. Supreme Court, shaped by three justices Trump appointed during his first administration. Trump denied interest in limiting access to IVF during the campaign.
“PROMISES MADE. PROMISES KEPT,” Leavitt wrote on X.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with his counterparts from France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the European Union following his talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.
Rubio briefed the group on his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday, and they “agreed to remain in close contact as we work to achieve a durable end to the conflict in Ukraine,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
European leaders weren’t invited to the talks in Riyadh. They held an emergency summit Monday to look at options for the way ahead amid concerns that the Trump administration is intent on a quick resolution to the Ukraine conflict with minimal input from Europe.
Senate Democrats are calling on the Trump administration to not go through with mass layoffs at the Internal Revenue Service this week and to immediately lift or clarify a hiring freeze at the agency.
The senators say Americans need the IRS to be fully staffed this tax season with workers who can answer their questions, process their returns, send them refunds and keep the IRS computer systems online and functional.
“The Trump administration can prevent a tax refund train wreck by avoiding mass layoffs and ending the freeze,” the senators wrote in a letter Tuesday to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and others.
Nine lawmakers signed the letter, led by Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. They requested a response by Feb. 27.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul held a series of meetings with key political figures Tuesday as she contemplates removing Mayor Eric Adams from his office after his administration has been thrown into disarray following the Justice Department’s decision to drop his corruption case so he could assist with President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The governor’s scheduled sit-downs — with a cohort of influential Black leaders and other top officials — come as Adams, a Democrat, faces questions about whether he has lost the ability to independently govern the city.
Hochul, also a Democrat, has the power to remove Adams from office. But she has been hesitant to do so, arguing that such a move would be undemocratic, while thrusting the city into an uncharted legal process.
Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Tuesday said he empathized with federal workers who are anxious about the Trump administration’s cuts on jobs.
“This workforce, which is talented and deep and experienced, is part of Virginia,” he said. “And so we want to make sure that first, they know that we understand. And second of all, we’re here to help them.”
Youngkin said there are a lot of opportunities in Virginia.
Youngkin’s comments come after he and other Republican officials in Virginia had argued that voters had backed Trump’s campaign promises. On Tuesday, he defended Trump’s actions, arguing the media was sensationalizing the issue.
“This is about this is about stepping back and making sure that tax dollars are being appropriately managed and deployed,” he said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency can’t fire federal employees. Instead, she said, the rash of federal firings were up to the heads of individual agencies.
Asked about a White House court filing saying Elon Musk isn’t DOGE administrator, Leavitt wouldn’t say who is leading DOGE.
She said Musk is “a senior adviser to the president, if you will.”
Pressed on military veterans who were among the federal employees being fired, Leavitt said, Trump “is delivering on the promise he made to the American people to make this government more efficient.”
Republicans are weighing billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, threatening health care coverage for some of the 80 million U.S. adults and children enrolled in the safety net program.
Millions more Americans signed up for taxpayer-funded health care coverage like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace during the Biden administration, a shift that was lauded by Democrats as a success.
But Republicans, who are looking to slash federal spending and offer lucrative tax cuts to corporations and wealthier Americans, now see a big target ripe for trimming. The $880 billion Medicaid program is financed mostly by federal taxpayers, who pick up as much as 80% of the tab in some states. And states, too, have said they’re having trouble financing years of growth and sicker patients who enrolled in Medicaid.
To whittle down the budget, the GOP-controlled Congress is eyeing work requirements for Medicaid. It’s also considering paying a shrunken, fixed rate to states. All told, over the next decade, Republican lawmakers could try to siphon billions of dollars from the nearly-free health care coverage offered to the poorest Americans.
▶ Read more about Republican efforts to Medicare spending cuts
After thousands of the agency’s employees were shown the exit door over the weekend, Kennedy held a welcome ceremony on Tuesday.
He called for a close study of vaccination recommendations, which calls for infants to be inoculated against deadly diseases like measles and polio. Despite years of safe, real-world use Kennedy suggested vaccinations could be to blame for a rise in chronic diseases.
Along with vaccines, a new commission will also scrutinize pesticides, microplastics, ultra-processed foods, anti-depressants and the electromagnetic radiation emitted by radios, TVs and cell phones, Kennedy said.
“Some of the possible factors we will investigate were formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized,” Kennedy told staffers on Tuesday.
New guidance calling for schools and universities to eliminate diversity initiatives within two weeks or risk losing federal money has campuses scrambling to assess the implications.
In a memo Friday, the Trump administration told schools to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. The demand threatens to upend all aspects of campus operations, from questions on college applications to classroom lessons and campus clubs.
In a campus letter at the University of Michigan, President Santa J. Ono said leaders are working to understand the implications.
At Oregon State University, a legal review concluded that its programs “are fully compliant with all state and federal laws,” according to a message from a campus spokesperson.
French President Emmanuel Macron invited a small number of handpicked European leaders to the Élysée Palace in a high-profile display of European coordination on Ukraine. He seized the moment as the Trump administration sidelined the continent by moving ahead with direct negotiations on Tuesday with Russia on the war in Ukraine. But beneath the diplomatic pageantry, cracks in European consensus were hard to ignore.
Would Europe take charge of its own security, or would it remain sidelined? From Macron’s push for European-led defense to Keir Starmer’s ‘third way’ diplomacy, Giorgia Meloni’s alignment with Trump, and Olaf Scholz’s reluctance to break with NATO’s traditional framework, the continent remains at odds over the best path forward.
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday that he has received U.S. assurances that Washington will not reduce its troop presence in Poland and elsewhere along NATO’s eastern flank.
A conservative who has long had good ties with Trump, Duda also returned to an idea he proposed years ago to create a U.S. military based called “Fort Trump” in his country.
The Trump administration has not announced any plans to pull forces out of the region but has said Europe must do more to provide for its own security. His administration’s stance has raised questions in the region about whether Washington will maintain its longstanding commitments to NATO partners.
▶ Read more about the Polish president’s comments
A Project 2025 leader says Trump and DOGE are conducting a figurative “controlled burn” across the federal government and a Republican congresswoman suggests fired federal workers will have to “refocus” after losing their jobs.
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., were speaking to reporters from a conservative conference in London.
They welcomed the cuts as right-sizing government. “I am sorry for anyone who may be losing their jobs that they are going to have to refocus their efforts,” said Hageman. “Ultimately, the benefits are going to outweigh the bad side.”
The White House had no immediate comment on the content of the orders. Trump has signed EOs almost daily since taking office a month ago to address a range of issues, including border security, tariffs and education policy.
Trump and adviser Elon Musk also taped their first joint TV interview last week with Sean Hannity. It’s set to air Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET on Fox News Channel.
Trump has been in Florida since he arrived late Friday.
The head of the influential Heritage Foundation praised Vance’s remarks in Munich as a “reality check” for Europe.
Kevin Roberts said during a virtual press conference at the conservative Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in London, it’s “the kind of common-sense revolution” that the Trump administration is bringing to both domestic and foreign policy.
While “there are a handful of European leaders who were crying in their beer” over Vance’s remarks – which were widely seen as giving nod to German’s extreme far-right – Roberts said the message from America was clear.
Trump will be an ally “if your country pulls its weight,” he said. But if not: “Stop counting on America to bail you out.”
The Trump administration is giving America’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, raising the stakes in the president’s fight against “wokeness” and sowing confusion as schools scramble to comply.
In a memo Friday, the Education Department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.
The sweeping demand could upend education in myriad ways. The memo targets college admissions offices, ordering an end to personal essays or writing prompts that can be used to predict an applicant’s race. It forbids dorms or graduation events for students of certain races. Efforts to recruit teachers from underrepresented groups could be seen as discrimination.
It’s meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students.
The memo itself doesn’t change federal law but reflects a change in the federal government’s interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. Under its broad language, nearly any practice that brings race into the discussion could be considered racial discrimination.
▶ Read more about Trump’s efforts to stop DEI programs
The Trump administration wants the justices to let Trump fire the head of a government whistleblower office. But before there’s any kind of decision, the court wants to hear from lawyers for Hampton Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel. The justices set a deadline of 2 p.m. Wednesday for their response in the case.
The quick turnaround is not unusual in emergency appeals to the justices.
The Trump administration wants the court to overturn, or at least put on hold, a court order that temporarily reinstated Dellinger to the office. It guards the federal workforce from illegal personnel actions.
The Trump administration’s downsizing and disbanding of federal agencies has hit efforts that improve election security and monitor foreign influence. That could create gaps for America’s enemies to exploit the next time the country holds a major election.
Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded an FBI task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections. She also limited the scope of enforcement actions on people who do not disclose lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. She wrote that the changes would “free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”
The Trump administration also has made sweeping cuts at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election systems.
A DHS official on Saturday said CISA was also pausing all election security activities pending a review of their funding, activities and personnel. The agency was ending its involvement in a voluntary program that shared information about cyber defenses with state and local election officials.
The actions send a message that securing U.S. elections against interference from countries such as Russia, China and Iran is no longer a federal government priority, said Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice.
▶Read more about the dismantling of federal efforts to monitor election interference
A federal judge on Monday questioned the authority of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency but was skeptical of a request to block DOGE from accessing sensitive data and firing employees at half a dozen federal agencies.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on a request from 14 states for a temporary restraining order seeking to curtail Musk’s power in President Donald Trump’s quest to downsize the federal government. Chutkan said she would rule within 24 hours.
The requests came from Democratic attorneys general, who had filed a lawsuit challenging what they called Musk’s “unchecked power.” The states are seeking to block DOGE from firing employees and accessing data at the federal Office of Personnel Management along with six federal agencies that oversee health and human services, education, energy, transportation, labor, and commerce.
▶ Read more about the upcoming ruling on Musk’s DOGE
The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that DOGE’s blind cost-cutting will put communities at risk.
Three U.S. officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration were abruptly laid off late Thursday, with some losing access to email before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning to find they were locked out. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
But by late Friday night, the agency’s acting director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings for all but 28 of those hundreds of fired staff members.
The accounts from the three officials contradict an official statement from the Department of Energy, which said fewer than 50 National Nuclear Security Administration staffers were let go, calling them “probationary employees” who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles.”
▶ Read more about the layoff reversal in NNSA
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Associated Press writers Tara Copp and Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this report.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that officials at U.S.-Russia talks agreed to restore embassy staffing and create a high-level team to negotiate peace in Ukraine peace and promote economic cooperation.
Rubio said that actions over the last several years have reduced both countries’ diplomatic missions’ abilities to operate.
He said: “We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits.”
▶ Read more about Rubio’s talks with Russian officials
For the second time in two weeks, Protesters against President Donald Trump and his policies organized demonstrations in all 50 states. Monday’s demonstrations were dubbed “No Kings on Presidents Day” by the 50501 Movement.
The Trump administration’s effort to slash the size of the federal workforce reached the FDA this weekend, including jobs reviewing the safety of food ingredients, medical devices and tobacco products like electronic cigarettes.
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