Trump Administration Highlights: Schumer Says Enough Democrats Will Vote to Avert Government Shutdown

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who took his position during the first Trump presidency and moved to shrink the agency’s ranks during the Biden administration, said he had signed an agreement with Mr. Musk’s group on Wednesday.

Mr. DeJoy, a Republican megadonor, wrote in the letter that Mr. Musk’s initiative was “an effort aligned” with his efforts.

He said that the Postal Service’s work force had shrunk by 30,000 since the 2021 fiscal year, and that the agency planned to complete a “further reduction of another 10,000 people in the next 30 days” through a previously established voluntary-retirement program.

Last week, Mr. Musk said at a tech conference organized by the bank Morgan Stanley that the Postal Service should be privatized, declaring, “We should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”

Mr. Trump has by turns suggested privatizing the independent agency and merging it with the Commerce Department. Union officials and Democratic lawmakers have been alarmed by the talk of privatization, and have argued that such a move would hurt workers, drive prices higher and disproportionately damage service in rural areas.

The agreement described by Mr. DeJoy on Thursday was comparatively less disruptive, but it drew a stern rebuke from Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which oversees the Postal Service.

Mr. Connolly said in a statement that the deal would bring “catastrophic consequences for all Americans — especially those in rural and hard-to-reach areas — who rely on the Postal Service every day.”

The “only thing worse for the Postal Service,” Mr. Connolly said in the statement, would be if the agency were turned over to Mr. Musk so that he could “undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss.”

In his letter, the postmaster general argued that the service had transformed in recent years from a “battered government bureaucracy” on the verge of financial collapse into an agency “experiencing an unprecedented period of growth and innovation.”

“Our strategies have focused on maintaining a modified, but sustainable, universal service mission that was noble when constructed, still meritorious today, and that can be financially self-sufficient with the changes we are pursuing,” Mr. DeJoy wrote.

The Postal Service was once a Cabinet-level department of the government, but was turned into an independent agency under President Richard Nixon. In 2021, the agency reported it had lost $87 billion in the previous 14 years.

Brian L. Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said in an interview on Thursday that he was “skeptical of DOGE.”

But Mr. Renfroe said Mr. Musk’s team had not yet done “anything that raises big alarms.”

“We will be in wait-and-see mode,” he said, adding that any new cuts at the Postal Service would “almost directly result in challenges providing the service that we provide every single day.”

The incident put on display the outcry over Mr. Trump’s decision last month to purge the Kennedy Center’s once-bipartisan board of its Biden appointees and have himself elected its chairman. (The president, who broke with tradition during his first term by not attending the Kennedy Center Honors after some of the artists being celebrated criticized him, complained that the center had become too “wokey.”)

Mr. Vance attended Thursday’s performance by the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the Kennedy Center’s flagship groups. The ensemble, under the baton of its music director, Gianandrea Noseda, performed Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2, with Leonidas Kavakos as the soloist. After an intermission, the orchestra played Stravinsky’s “Petrushka.”

The Vances stayed for the entire concert, audience members said. Ms. Vance was recently appointed by Mr. Trump to serve as a board member at the Kennedy Center, alongside other Trump allies like Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; and Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host.

The concert started about 20 minutes late because of added security measures, audience members said.

A White House spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Richard Grenell, whom Mr. Trump named as the center’s new president, posted on social media on Friday morning that the video showing Mr. Vance being booed “should challenge us all to commit to making the Kennedy Center a place where everyone is welcomed.”

“It troubles me to see that so many in the audience appear to be white and intolerant of diverse political views,” he wrote. “Diversity is our strength. We must do better. We must welcome EVERYONE. We will not allow the Kennedy Center to be an intolerant place.”

In February, President Trump ousted the Kennedy Center’s longtime chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein, the center’s largest donor. His new board of loyalists elected him chairman and fired Deborah F. Rutter, the center’s president for more than a decade. At least three other top staff members were also dismissed.

Performers, including the actress Issa Rae and the musician Rhiannon Giddens, have dropped out in protest amid fears that Mr. Trump’s calls to rid the center of “woke” influences, drag shows and “anti-American propaganda” would result in a reshaping of programming. The musical “Hamilton” recently scrapped a planned tour there next year.

While Mr. Trump has not yet articulated his vision for the center, his appointees have provided some hints. Mr. Grenell recently said that the center planned “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”

The spokesman, who did not allow his name to be used, also said that General Haugh was holding meetings with key White House advisers to ensure the N.S.A. and Cyber Command were “aligned” with the priorities of Mr. Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

Mr. Musk’s visit was reported earlier by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

The N.S.A. is one of the most bureaucratic of the U.S. spy agencies but collects some of the most valuable intelligence, scooping up telephone and computer communications around the world.

Cyber Command, while a separate organization, is also headquartered at Fort Meade.

While Mr. Musk has criticized the federal government’s computer systems, the N.S.A. has some of the most expert cryptologists and computer network experts in the world.

Mr. Musk this week complained about a disruption of service attack on X that caused service outages. On Monday, he said on Fox News that the cyberattack originated from “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” However, an activist hacking group, Dark Storm, claimed responsibility, and experts have cast doubt that the attack actually originated from Ukraine.

Mr. Grijalva, as durable as a cactus in Arizona’s political scene, represented a border district in his state — covering parts of Tucson, tribal reservations and the vast desert along the U.S.-Mexico border — for more than two decades. He was a liberal fixture of a fast-changing state powered by new arrivals, neighborhoods and businesses eating into the Sonoran desert that Mr. Grijalva, a passionate conservationist, cherished and tried to protect.

His liberal stances often put him out of step with Arizona’s Republican-heavy congressional delegation and even Democratic leaders who often tacked to the center in the bitterly contested swing state.

But his progressivism endeared him to voters in his left-leaning district and earned loyal support from tribal leaders. One of his final major legislative efforts sought to block a copper mining project at Oak Flat, a sacred area to Western Apache people.

As the son of a Mexican father who came to the United States as part of the bracero-guest-worker program, Mr. Grijalva espoused staunch support for immigrants, unions, tribal rights and environmental protections. He got his start in politics in Tucson, serving as a school board member and county supervisor before being elected to Congress in 2002.

Mr. Grijalva announced in April that he had been diagnosed with cancer. Months later, he said that he would retire at the end of his current term in January 2027.

Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona is required to call a special election for the seat within 72 hours. A special primary election must then be held between 120 and 130 days later, followed by a special general election 70 to 80 days afterward. Mr. Grijalva won re-election with 63.4 percent of the vote in 2024, and whoever wins the Democratic primary for the seat would be the favorite to replace him.

A spokesman for Ms. Hobbs said that it was too soon for any announcement on the timing of an election. Ms. Hobbs also praised Mr. Grijalva in a separate statement as a “true champion for the people of our state.”

She continued: “To his last day, he remained a servant leader who put everyday people first while in office. I join every Arizonan in mourning his passing.”

Robert Jimison contributed reporting.

Agencies were given guidance and a timeline in February to submit outlines for “reductions in force,” a bureaucratic term meaning the shrinking of an organization. They were told to pursue the “maximum elimination” of job functions not protected in statute, with a deadline of March 13 to submit initial plans, and April 14 for detailed proposals of how agencies would be structured after making deep cuts.

While some agencies have not yet announced detailed plans, many have already begun laying off hundreds or even thousands of employees. The cuts expand a downsizing effort that began with buyout offers and the termination of probationary workers.

At least some planned cuts could be challenged in court, but it is unclear if lawsuits to block them will succeed. Last week, the Supreme Court blocked a ruling from a federal judge in California that ordered the administration to rehire probationary workers, and a federal appeals court in Maryland blocked a similar order from a lower-court judge, clearing the way for the Trump administration to fire probationary workers, for now.

If the layoffs go forward, there are rules dictating how government agencies can make them. Part of the process is assigning scores to individual employees based on their length of service, performance and veteran status. Those with the highest scores are supposed to be prioritized for finding other jobs in the agency.

Here is what we know about the reduction-in-force efforts at various agencies.

Health and Human Services

In early April, the Trump administration cut an additional 10,000 employees from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The latest cuts hit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration particularly hard: Both agencies were expected to lose about 20 percent of their staff members. The C.D.C. was to set lose about 2,400 employees, while the F.D.A. was set to lose about 3,500.

Plans for the National Institutes of Health called for the dismissal of 1,200 staff members, and about 300 from the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid. The administration also fired the entire staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Education Department

More than 1,300 workers were fired in March, on top of the 572 who took resignation packages and 63 probationary workers who have been fired. The reductions cut the size of the agency, which started the year with 4,133 workers, nearly in half.

Mr. Trump has signed an executive order aimed at closing the department. He announced plans to move federal student loans to the Small Business Administration and put special education and nutrition programs under the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Veterans Affairs Department

The department has planned to cut 80,000 people. That number could include people who are retiring or taking a buyout, however.

In total, the department is seeking to shrink its work force from 482,000 to 399,957.

U.S. Agency for International Development

The administration plans to eliminate the government’s main agency for distributing foreign aid, and bring a drastically reduced portfolio of “lifesaving” assistance programs under the purview of the State Department. As part of the dismantling of the agency, the jobs of all remaining staff members will be terminated by Aug. 15, according to internal notices viewed by The New York Times, and they will have to reapply for any similar jobs that are created to manage the programs that move to the State Department.

The Trump administration already eliminated thousands of the approximately 10,000 positions previously budgeted as part of the agency.

U.S. Agency for Global Media

The agency, which is home to the international news and broadcast service Voice of America, is one of seven agencies that Mr. Trump ordered the elimination of in a March 14 executive order. The others were the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund and the Minority Business Development Agency.

Mr. Trump has issued similar executive orders targeting specific agencies for significant reductions. In February, he issued an order calling for the Presidio Trust, the federal agency that manages the Presidio National Park in San Francisco; the Inter-American Foundation; the United States African Development Foundation; and the United States Institute of Peace to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” Many staff members have already been fired.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The Trump administration took early steps to neuter the bureau, which was established during the Obama administration to protect consumers from deceptive or predatory financial practices. An appeals court ruling last week allowed the administration to proceed with some cuts to the agency, but left in place a lower court’s orders preventing the destruction of records and data.

The bureau is one of several regulatory agencies targeted by the administration for reductions. Others include the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The agency has planned to cut at least 1,000 people in addition to 1,300 workers who have resigned or were laid off. At least some of the firings took place last week, according to reports that tracked that hundreds of climate workers were let go.

The planned cuts included halving the budget of the National Ocean Service and a complete halt to funding for programs like the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, which studies corals, pollution, and the effect of climate change and sea-level rise on coastal communities. The budget for the National Marine Fisheries Service is also expected to be reduced by one-third.

Internal Revenue Service

The I.R.S. is bracing to lose as much as half of its staff. The planned layoffs, which began in February, come as the Trump administration has struck a deal with the agency to share sensitive tax records to assist the Department of Homeland Security with deportations.

Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration has said it wants to shed 7,000 of its 57,000 employees. About 2,800 Social Security employees have taken buyouts or early retirements promoted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to agency data.

NASA

The agency said it would cut jobs by closing specific offices. The Office of Technology, Policy and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist; and the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility were targeted, as well as some employees in the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, according to a March 10 memo shared with The Times.

The administration also plans to make a 20 percent cut to the Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., which is under the Interior Department but provides NASA with information to safely land astronauts on the moon and robotic probes on Mars.

The agency did not provide a total number of cuts.

Defense Department

Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg produced a memo this month outlining some of the criteria that leaders at the Pentagon will rely on as it goes about reducing the civilian work force by anywhere from 5 to 8 percent. In February, senior Pentagon leaders were told that about 55,000 civilian employees worldwide would be fired.

The April memo says that certain managers with only one or a handful of direct reports should be “considered for consolidation,” while certain functions like sales and recreation should be “prioritized for privatization.”

Housing and Urban Development

Scott Turner, the department’s secretary, has forecast plans to slash 50 percent of the staff. That figure includes cutting 77 percent of the work force in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, which enforces the Fair Housing Act, the law that prevents discrimination in buying or renting a home.

The agency previously announced layoff plans for 144 employees in its Office of Field Policy and Management. It has not disclosed other details about future cuts.

Christina Jewett and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

In the weeks after Mr. Musk’s team fanned out across federal agencies demanding access to federal offices and databases, lawyers seeking to stop the group’s advances have been forced to rely on news reports and anecdotal evidence about what, exactly, Mr. Musk’s team has been doing.

In many cases, federal judges have grown frustrated by the inability of the government’s own lawyers to answer straightforward questions about what data Mr. Musk’s associates have viewed, or to what extent the group had directly spearheaded recent downsizing efforts. In filings in another case, the government has also downplayed Mr. Musk’s role, claiming he was not officially the group’s leader.

The group of states had asked Judge Chutkan to grant the request to let them probe Mr. Musk’s team for information in order to confirm details about its operations and its future plans, and to “illustrate the nature and scope of the unconstitutional and unlawful authority” they said Mr. Musk has so far exercised.

Judge Chutkan agreed, writing in an opinion that “the requests seek to identify DOGE personnel and the parameters of DOGE’s and Musk’s authority — a question central to Plaintiffs’ claims.”

The order on Wednesday was more limited than the states’ slightly more ambitious request, which included a demand for two members of Mr. Musk’s team to sit for depositions — an ask Judge Chutkan denied. But the order still requires Mr. Musk and his office to provide a broad array of information about its engagement with federal agencies, employees, contracts, grants and databases within three weeks.

Judges in other cases have responded similarly to demands for more clarity about Mr. Musk’s team, which has largely been shrouded in secrecy.

On Thursday, a judge in California required an associate of Mr. Musk’s who was detailed to the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm, to be deposed about any role he had in helping steer the mass firings of federal workers.

And on Monday, a judge in Washington ruled that Mr. Musk’s office was subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and ordered it to rapidly produce records that a public ethics group had sued to obtain.

The government called for the university to formalize its definition of antisemitism, to ban the wearing of masks “intended to conceal identity or intimidate” and to place the school’s Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under “academic receivership.”

“We expect your immediate compliance,” officials from the General Services Administration, Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services said in a letter.

They said that since the Trump administration had announced it was cutting the funding, “your counsel has asked to discuss ‘next steps.’” The administration demanded a response to its letter within a week as “a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government.”

Read the Letter to Columbia University

The Trump administration sent a letter to Columbia on Thursday demanding that the university make dramatic changes in student discipline and admissions before it would discuss lifting the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts.

Read Document 2 pages

The Trump administration’s move to cut Columbia’s grants and contracts represented an extraordinary escalation of the government’s actions against the university.

Columbia, it said, “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.”

A Columbia spokeswoman said Thursday evening that the school was “reviewing the letter" from the three government agencies, adding, “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus.”

On social media, Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, described the government’s letter as essentially saying, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.”

Hours earlier, the school announced a range of disciplinary actions against students who occupied a campus building last spring, including expulsions and suspensions.

The punishments levied include “multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions,” according to a statement. The school did not release the names of students who would be punished, in compliance with federal privacy laws, according to a university spokeswoman. It is unclear how many students have been punished.

The announcement came one day after Gregory J. Wawro, a professor of political science who also serves as the university’s rules administrator, said in a statement that the hearings for students accused of violations “in connection with the April 17-18 encampment on the South Lawn and the occupation of Hamilton Hall” had been completed.

Student defendants were allowed to bring two advisers, including legal counsel, to hearings, which were held over video conference, according to a Columbia employee with knowledge of the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly.

Late Thursday, Columbia’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, said that the Department of Homeland Security had searched two dorm rooms after presenting two federal search warrants. In an email to students and staff, and a news release, Ms. Armstrong said that no one was detained and nothing had been taken. She did not say what the target of the warrants was.

Columbia University and the D.H.S. did not immediately respond to requests for comments after working hours.

The Trump administration has placed increasing scrutiny on universities in recent weeks. On Monday, it warned 60 other universities they, too, could face penalties from pending investigations into antisemitism on college campuses.

Last spring, Columbia began to issue suspensions of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had been encamped for more than a week on campus as they protested the university’s investment in Israel, including its dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University.

A protest that had mostly been nonviolent then took a turn, with demonstrators breaking into and seizing Hamilton Hall, an academic building. After about 20 hours, Columbia’s president at the time, Dr. Nemat Shafik, called in the city’s Police Department. Officers in riot gear arrested dozens of people.

A maintenance worker who was trapped in the building was physically injured in the melee.

In all, nearly 50 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had been inside Hamilton Hall were arrested, along with more than 100 others who were protesting in and around the campus.

Questions about how the university administration was handling discipline have dogged the school since.

In February, the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Ms. Armstrong, and Columbia’s board chairs, David Greenwald and Claire Shipman, listing “numerous antisemitic incidents” that it said had taken place in the last two academic years.

Those incidents include the student occupation of Hamilton Hall last April, the protest against a class taught by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the disruption of an Israeli history class.

Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan who is the chair of the House committee, said he was glad that there has been forward movement but expressed frustration that the school has not provided the detailed disciplinary records his committee seeks.

“I welcome the news that some lawbreaking individuals are being held accountable,” Mr. Walberg said, “but I remain skeptical about Columbia University’s long-term ability to continue to hold pro-terror supporters accountable given the school’s obfuscation.”

The university said that it began its judicial process last summer, filing its complaints against students with the University Judicial Board, which is an independent panel of faculty, students and staff.

Students notified on Thursday of the sanctions have five business days to file an appeal, on grounds that there was a procedural error, availability of new information or “excessiveness of sanction.” A university appellate board has 10 days to issue a ruling.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a group that helped organize the protests and last fall asserted its support for “armed resistance,” said on its Instagram page Thursday that “the university’s extreme repression is a panicked attempt at silencing the movement for Palestinian liberation,” adding that “they have seen our unyielding commitment to Palestine firsthand over the last year, and they are terrified.”

The announcement of sanctions can be seen as a sign that “Columbia has turned the corner,” said Professor Joshua Mitts, a professor in the law school who this semester is teaching a seminar on free speech and civil liberties on campus. He is also the adviser to Law Students Against Antisemitism, a campus group.

Calling the judicial process “fair and transparent,” Mr. Mitts said that the university showed its fidelity to due process, free speech and academic freedom as it sought to upend antisemitism.

“This is Columbia at its best,” he said.

Nearly half the school’s total revenue last year came from federally funded research, including $365 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development. In all, the university will lose $800 million in funding over several years from U.S.A.I.D., which the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling.

Johns Hopkins is one of the top university recipients of the funding that the administration is aiming to slash. And it appears to be among the most deeply affected of the major research institutions that are reeling from cuts — or the threat of cuts — to federal money that they depend on for research studies and running labs.

In a statement on Thursday calling it a “difficult day,” Johns Hopkins said it was “immensely proud” of its work on the projects, which included efforts to “care for mothers and infants, fight disease, provide clean drinking water and advance countless other critical, lifesaving efforts around the world.”

In a statement last week describing Johns Hopkins’s reliance on federal funding, Ron Daniels, the university’s president said, “We are, more than any other American university, deeply tethered to the compact between our sector and the federal government.”

Of the school’s total operating revenue in 2023, $3.8 billion, or nearly half, came federally funded research. The Trump administration has said that it wants to make the government leaner and more efficient by, among other measures, dramatically cutting financial support for the program, which promotes public health and food security in low-income countries.

In ordering cutbacks in the agency, which amount to a 90 percent reduction in its operations, President Trump said that it was run by “radical left lunatics” and that is was riddled with “tremendous fraud.”

Critics of the decision, however, have said the cuts are ushering in a new era of isolationism that could prove to be dangerous. Sunil Solomon, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, said the cuts would lead to a resurgence in the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

“What true great nations do is help other nations, but now, it seems, we’re America first,” Dr. Solomon said.

The administration has also sought to reduce the amount of money that the National Institutes of Health sends to university for research, cuts that have been blocked for now in the courts. If they go into effect, those cuts would reduce federal payments to Johns Hopkins by more than $100 million a year, according to an analysis of university figures.

The university, which receives about $1 billion a year in N.I.H. funding and is currently running 600 clinical trials, is one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging those cuts.

Separately, the Trump administration also has targeted specific schools for cuts. It slashed $400 million from Columbia’s budget last week based on accusations that it had failed to protect students and faculty from antisemitism.

Johns Hopkins and Columbia are on a list of 10 schools that the administration says are being scrutinized by an executive branch antisemitism task force. The administration has threatened to reduce federal funding for schools on the list, and others, that it views as being noncompliant with federal civil rights laws.

In addition to the more than 2,000 employees whose jobs have been eliminated, the university said that an additional 78 domestic employees and 29 international would be furloughed at reduced schedules.

The cuts at Johns Hopkins involve programs funded by U.S.A.I.D. through which American universities have worked with global partners, largely to advance public health and agricultural research. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this week that 5,200 of the agency’s 6,200 contracts had been canceled and that the remaining programs would be operated directly by the State Department, eliminating the need for U.S.A.I.D., which is under the State Department.

Research projects that are being eliminated include international work on tuberculosis, AIDS and cervical cancer, as well as programs that directly benefit residents of Baltimore.

Dr. Solomon, the epidemiologist, runs a $50 million, six-year program to improve H.I.V. outcomes in India. He said the budget cuts in his program alone would result in layoffs of about 600 people in the United States and India. The program had led to, among other things, the diagnosis of almost 20,000 people with H.I.V. through contact tracing.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Dr. Solomon said. “Stopping funding isn’t going to kill you today, but in six months you’re going to see an impact around the world.”

Dr. Judd Walson runs the department of international health at Johns Hopkins, which oversaw a five-year, $200 million program to diagnose and control tuberculosis in 20 countries funded by U.S.A.I.D.

In Kampala, Uganda, he said, the program was the only way children were diagnosed.

“That’s just one example of how the sudden withdrawal of support is having real impacts on survival,” he said.

In addition to the loss of jobs at Johns Hopkins, he said, the loss of the programs will lead to a spike in communicable diseases worldwide.

What is essentially a shutdown of U.S.A.I.D. has had significant effects at universities around the country.

An organization called USAID StopWork, which is tracking the layoffs, said that overall, 14,000 domestic workers had lost their jobs so far, with thousands more anticipated.

Research by the Federal Reserve shows that universities serve as major economic engines in many agricultural regions, from Iowa to Florida, meaning that the impact of the administration’s cuts to science research will be felt in both red states and left-leaning communities like Baltimore.

The elimination of a $500 million agriculture project called Feed the Future, which funded agriculture labs at 19 universities in 17 states, means many of those labs must shutter.

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 30 people have lost their jobs at a Feed the Future lab that worked on improving soybean cultivation in Africa, according to Peter D. Goldsmith, a professor of agriculture who ran that laboratory.

At Mississippi State University in Starkville, Miss., a fisheries laboratory was shut down, according to Sidney L. Salter, a university spokesman, who did not disclose the number of jobs lost.

Economic ripple effects of the funding cuts are expected to spread through the Baltimore area. Johns Hopkins, which enrolls about 30,000 students, is also one of Maryland’s largest private employers.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent. After weeks of selling, the index is now down 10.1 percent from a peak that it reached less than one month ago and is in a correction — a Wall Street term for when an index falls 10 percent or more from its peak, and a line in the sand for investors worried about a sell-off gathering steam.

Other major indexes, including the Russell 2000 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, had already fallen into correction. On Thursday, the Nasdaq fell 2 percent, while the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies, which tend to be more exposed to the ebb and flow of the economy, was 1.6 percent lower.

The deeper worry among investors is that uncertainty around the effects of President Trump’s policies is causing consumers to spend less and discouraging businesses from investing. That reticence could, in turn, drive the economy into a downturn, forcing investors to reassess company valuations.

“I think what markets are telling us is that they are very concerned about the potential for a recession,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. “That is certainly not what markets expected going into 2025.”

This is the 11th correction in the S&P 500 since the 2008-9 financial crisis, according to data from Yardeni Research. Three of the previous downturns turned into bear markets, defined as a more severe decline of at least 20 percent.

So far, the administration has brushed off the market turmoil. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that he was focused on the “real economy,” downplaying signals sent by business leaders and investors. “I’m not concerned about a little bit of volatility over three weeks,” he said.

As stocks have been falling in recent weeks, the Trump administration has emphasized that its economic policies are designed to promote job growth over the long term, but could cause some market turmoil in the short term.

Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said the economy had already begun to be “negatively impacted.”

The pain has been acutely felt among the behemoth tech companies that drove the market higher in recent years, but their once rallying share prices have since reversed course. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index has fallen roughly 14 percent from its peak in December.

The sell-off has also spread to other corners of the market, signaling broader concerns than simply a re-pricing of highly valued technology companies. The Russell 2000 has fallen 18 percent from its peak in November, close to a full-fledged bear market.

Sectors of the stock market exposed to tariffs, like food producers, have slumped. The effects are being felt by other companies, like retailers and airlines, that are worried about a pullback among consumers should the economy enter a downturn. On Thursday, the low-cost retailer Dollar General said customer traffic fell in its most recent quarter, and the company predicted continued financial pressure. Delta Air Lines cut its financial forecast this week for the first three months of the year, citing less demand for domestic travel.

“So far in 2025, the U.S. economy has only faced headwinds,” Ms. Shah said.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump threatened to impose 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne, one day after the European Union announced retaliatory tariffs on imports of U.S. whiskey and several other American products. The president has already added tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, and a wide swath of products from China.

And when asked by reporters about tariffs on Canada — one of the United States’ largest trading partners — he was adamant that he would not offer a reprieve.

“I’m sorry, we have to do this,” Mr. Trump said.

The constantly moving goal posts have left investors so rattled that even recent good news about the economy hasn’t had a calming effect. On Thursday, a report on weekly unemployment claims came in lower than expected. On Wednesday, a better-than-expected reading of the Consumer Price Index had briefly helped bolster stocks.

Investors are worried that tariffs, once in full effect, will push prices higher — hurting business and consumers. Mr. Trump’s immigration policies and firings of federal employees through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency are also looming in the backdrop, as is the threat of an impending government shutdown.

“The outlook for inflation depends more on tariffs, deportations and DOGE than the backward-looking data releases right now,” Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, said on Thursday.

According to the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts district court, HUD and DOGE, operating at the direction of President Trump, made an “egregious overstep” when they canceled dozens of grants connected to the Fair Housing Initiatives Program. The program and the grants distributed to state and city organizations are used to enforce the federal Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, ethnicity, religion and other factors, like gender identity and disability.

Most fair housing complaints in the United States are handled by local housing organizations: In 2022, these groups received more than 33,000 complaints.

Local fair housing organizations generally have annual budgets of less than $1 million, and the grants account for a significant portion of their revenues. The groups say they had no warning that the funding would end abruptly. “The impact of these dollars is concrete and profound,” the complaint reads.

“It’s how they pay their bills,” said Yiyang Wu, a lawyer at the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax, which is representing the fair housing organizations. “It’s their bread and butter.”

In its letters, HUD told the organizations that each grant being canceled “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”

HUD and DOGE launched a joint task force they said would eliminate waste, fraud and abuse last month. In a news release announcing the task force on Feb. 13, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said that under his leadership, the department would be “detailed and deliberate about every dollar spent” to “better serve the American people.”

The department has made widespread slashes to initiatives that it said promoted diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “DEI is dead at HUD,” Mr. Turner has repeatedly said in recent weeks.

Since receiving notice of the funding cuts, some fair-housing groups are now leaning on their reserves to pay bills. Others are already struggling.

The San Antonio Fair Housing Council, which previously had four full-time staff, three part-time staff and three per-diem workers, was forced to lay off more than half of its work force.

The Massachusetts Fair Housing Center was forced to turn away clients, including a domestic violence survivor who was facing displacement from her temporary shelter. And the Intermountain Fair Housing Council, which serves the entire state of Idaho, has been forced to “narrow its service area, leaving 10 counties without any eviction prevention or fair housing services,” the lawsuit reads.

The grant termination, said Lila Miller, another lawyer at Relman Colfax, was illegal because the grants had been allotted by Congress. She said Congress has not authorized DOGE to direct another agency’s operations.

“Congress makes the law and Congress sets the bounds of agency action,” she said.