Trump Administration Live Updates: President Said to Be Backing Off Plans for $1.8 Billion Fund After Backlash
“President Trump is reportedly backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to compensate individuals claiming unfair prosecution by the government. The plan faced backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, with concerns it would reward Trump’s political allies. The Justice Department stated it would abide by a court order halting the fund’s disbursement, which some senators interpreted as a clear acknowledgment of the fund’s unworkability.
What We’re Covering Today
Payout Fund: President Trump is backing off his plan for a $1.8 billion fund to pay people he says have been victimized by the federal government, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Trump has not abandoned his immunity from audits, which also emerged as part of a deal with the I.R.S. to drop his lawsuit against the agency. It was not clear whether word that he planned to drop the plan would satisfy skeptical lawmakers, including many Republicans, who had revolted over the fund, imperiling the passage of a bill to fund the president’s immigration crackdown. Read more ›
U.S. Military: Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, recently blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior admirals to rise to one-star admiral rank. His actions appeared to violate promotion system rules and disproportionally affected women and minority officers. Read more ›
President Trump is backing off his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of unfair prosecution by the government, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the president’s thinking, said he had been leaning for days toward scrapping the fund, which critics have characterized as a scheme to reward Mr. Trump’s political allies with public benefits.
Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, said that “it is not enough for me to have the courts pushback” on the weaponization fund and echoed what many of his colleagues have said, that the statement from the Department of Justice did not satisfy all of his concerns. “I have a lot of unanswered questions,” he said adding that he would support “pretty robust” guardrails on any future effort to move ahead with the fund.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, told reporters on Monday that the Trump administration should clearly state that it is giving up on the $1.8 billion fund that stands to benefit President Trump’s allies if it had changed its position. Earlier today, the Justice Department said in a statement that it was abiding by the court order stopping disbursement of funds for now, but said it disagreed with the court’s decision. “I appreciate them saying that, but they don’t have a choice,” Kennedy told reporters. “They have to abide by “the federal district court order.”
On Capitol Hill, a Republican leadership aide said Republican senators interpreted the Justice Department’s statement, which said that it would abide by a federal judge’s temporary order not to proceed with any steps to activate the fund until at least June 12, as a clear walk back and a clear acknowledgement that the fund was unworkable. The aide said that this move was what members have been asking for, although it was not clear whether the statement alone would unlock the votes needed to move ahead with a narrow reconciliation bill.
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas who just lost his primary to a Trump-backed candidate last week, said that he was satisfied with the Justice Department statement on the fund, which threatened to hold up passage of a reconciliation bill. “It makes it moot,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll get the reconciliation bill done. They said they’ll accept the ruling of the judge, that makes it moot.”
Trump is backing off of his plan to establish a $1.8 billion fund to compensate people who claimed they were victims of government “weaponization” by Democrats, according to two people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
His move, which he not commented on publicly, came as the fund drew widespread backlash from Democrats and Republican senators.
The Trump administration is dismantling a $368 million deep-ocean observation system that was put in place a decade ago to monitor coastal environments, marine ecosystems and powerful currents that affect the global climate.
The National Science Foundation said it would send ships in June to begin removing more than 900 deep-sea instruments anchored off Oregon, Washington State, Alaska, North Carolina, and an area between Greenland and Iceland known as the Irminger Sea.
A federal judge in Washington ruled on Monday that protesters criticizing President Trump near the Capitol could not be forced to take down a flag reading “8647,” finding no indication that the message could be taken as a true threat against the president’s life.
Judge Randolph D. Moss wrote that despite efforts by police to compel the group, an advocacy organization called Accountability Now USA, to remove the flag and other signage over the course of several months, he concluded it was clear that the flag and its message were protected speech. The dispute in some ways mirrored the criminal case against James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who was indicted on a charge of making a threat against the president over a photograph posted to Instagram that depicted seashells on a beach arranged into the same numbers.
The Defense Department has designated its press office as a classified space, off limits to journalists, further restricting interactions between its public-facing representatives and the reporters assigned to cover the military.
The move, confirmed by the department’s acting press secretary, follows a change in policy from earlier this year that required journalists to have an official escort at all times when visiting the Pentagon.
A divided federal appeals court on Monday blocked the Trump administration from removing more than two dozen transgender service members from the military while a lawsuit fighting their dismissal is decided.
The 2-to-1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the latest legal salvo over a divisive policy that has forced out thousands of troops and left thousands of others in limbo for more than a year.
A federal judge on Monday blocked Trump administration efforts to strip the the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado-based climate research laboratory, of its oversight of a key computing center in Wyoming. The administration’s plan to transfer stewardship of the facility, announced in February, has already caused a “flood of resignations” by scientists and threatens the future of the lab, wrote R. Brooke Jackson, a senior U.S. district judge in Colorado, in a preliminary injunction against the National Science Foundation.
There is evidence the decision may have been driven by political retribution against Colorado leaders, and it may have violated federal law on administrative procedures, Judge Jackson said. N.S.F. officials declined to comment.
The center, known as NCAR, has managed the supercomputing center — used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists to model atmospheric conditions and study air pollution, wildfires, hurricanes and solar storms — since the facility opened in 2012. The Trump administration said it was transferring oversight of the facility to an unspecified third party.
The Energy Department has issued new guidance that could prevent people from receiving rebates for replacing gas appliances with electric ones.
The guidance, which took effect on Friday, would prevent states from offering rebates to people who buy an electric stove to replace a gas range. It would also end rebates for similar swaps of ovens, dryers, heat pumps and water heaters.
In a move that disproportionately targets women and minority officers, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of nine Navy officers who had been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals.
The net result of Mr. Hegseth’s intervention is a slate of 22 nominees to be one-star admirals that bears little resemblance to the broader force these officers will help lead.
In late April, a lawyer for the Justice Department told a federal judge that her colleagues had been in the midst of negotiations with a Rhode Island hospital about turning over gender-transition treatment health records, only for the hospital’s lawyers to stop responding.
But Judge Mary S. McElroy of Federal District Court in Rhode Island concluded that was not true. While the government claimed it had not heard from the hospital since February, emails showed the hospital’s lawyers had stayed in close touch.
Former F.B.I. officials are starting a group to help embattled bureau employees grapple with the Trump administration’s rapid efforts to reshape its agency, saying that the work force is under incredible strain under its director, Kash Patel.
The group, called the F.B.I. Support Network, is an offshoot of the Justice Connection organization, made up of former Justice Department employees who offer legal, mental health or job search services to current agency employees.
More than 200 people have now been killed in a bombing campaign by the U.S. military against people it has accused of smuggling drugs in the waters off South America, after a string of deadly attacks over the last week.
The military said on Saturday that three men had been killed in the eastern Pacific during a strike ordered by Gen. Francis L. Donovan, the head of the Southern Command, against a boat that was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.” Their deaths bring the total killed to at least 202, in more than 60 strikes“
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