Trump Administration Highlights: Officials Included Journalist in Group Chat on Yemen Attack Plans in Extraordinary Breach
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President Trump, from left, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Where Things Stand
Security breach: The White House confirmed an extraordinary breach of security involving top government officials — including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who discussed plans for military strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen in a group chat on a commercial messaging app that inadvertently included the top editor of The Atlantic. President Trump denied knowing about it. Read more ›
Deportation order: A federal judge kept in place his ruling barring the Trump administration from using a powerful wartime statute to deport Venezuelan migrants it deemed to be members of a violent street gang. The judge, James E. Boasberg, said migrants should have the opportunity to challenge accusations that they belong to the gang, Tren de Aragua, before being flown to a prison in El Salvador under the 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act. Read more ›
Education Department suit: The American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors and a pair of public school districts in Massachusetts sued the Trump administration, seeking to block its attempts to dismantle the Education Department. They say Mr. Trump’s executive order last week to “facilitate the closure of the department” was an attempt to evade congressional authority. Read more ›
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “nobody was texting” classified U.S. attack plans using a messaging app.CreditCredit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disclosed war plans in an encrypted group chat that included a journalist two hours before U.S. troops launched attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, the White House said on Monday, confirming an account in the magazine The Atlantic.
The editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote in an article published on Monday that he was mistakenly added to the text chat on the commercial messaging app Signal by Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.
It was an extraordinary breach of American national security intelligence. Not only was the journalist inadvertently included in the group, but the conversation also took place outside the secure government channels that would normally be used for classified and highly sensitive war planning.
Mr. Goldberg said he was able to follow the conversation among senior members of President Trump’s national security team in the two days leading up to the strikes in Yemen. The group also included Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mr. Goldberg wrote.
At 11:44 a.m. on March 15, Mr. Hegseth posted the “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” Mr. Goldberg wrote. “The information contained in them, if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East.”
In an interview, Mr. Goldberg said that “up until the Hegseth text on Saturday, it was mainly procedural and policy texting. Then it became war plans, and to be honest, that sent a chill down my spine.”
Mr. Goldberg did not publish the details of the war plans in his article.
Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Goldberg wrote, said that “the first detonations in Yemen would be felt two hours hence, at 1:45 p.m. Eastern time. So I waited in my car in a supermarket parking lot.”
“If this Signal chat was real, I reasoned, Houthi targets would soon be bombed,” he added.
At around 1:55, initial airstrikes hit buildings in neighborhoods in and around Sana, Yemen’s capital, that were known Houthi leadership strongholds, according to Pentagon officials and residents. The strikes continued throughout that Saturday and into the next few days.
Mr. Hegseth, Mr. Goldberg wrote, declared to the group — which included the journalist — that steps had been taken to keep the information secret.
“We are currently clean on OPSEC,” Mr. Hegseth wrote, using the military acronym for operational security.
Several Defense Department officials expressed shock that Mr. Hegseth had put American war plans into a commercial chat group. They said that having this type of conversation in a Signal chat group itself could be a violation of the Espionage Act, a law covering the handling of sensitive information.
Revealing operational war plans before planned strikes could also put American troops directly into harm’s way, the officials said. And former F.B.I. officials who worked on leak cases described this as a devastating breach of national security. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security matter.
Former national security officials said that if personal cellphones were used in the group chat, the behavior would be even more egregious because of ongoing Chinese hacking efforts.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that the “story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen.”
“Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion and precision, using approved secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line,” he added.
Republican senators faced a barrage of questions. Many said they were concerned, but most were withholding judgment until they could receive a full briefing.
“It appears that mistakes were made, no question,” said Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican who is the chairman of the chamber’s Armed Services Committee. “We’ll try to get to ground truth and take appropriate action.”
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN that his panel would send an inquiry to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and then determine whether a fuller investigation is warranted.
But Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, dismissed the idea of additional investigations or discipline for the officials involved. “I’m told they’re doing an investigation to find out how that number was included, and that should be that,” Mr. Johnson told reporters at the Capitol, referring to White House officials. “I’m not sure that it requires much additional attention.”
Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said that he had no knowledge of the article in The Atlantic. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said, adding, “You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
The Pentagon referred questions about the article to the National Security Council. Mr. Hegseth was traveling to Hawaii on Monday, his first stop on a weeklong trip to Asia. He spoke to reporters traveling with him after landing in Hawaii, called Mr. Goldberg a “so-called journalist” and, when pressed, said that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that.”
But the White House appeared to contradict him. “At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain,” Brian Hughes, the National Security Council spokesman, said in an emailed statement. He called the thread “a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials.”
The State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, said at a press briefing that she would not comment on Mr. Rubio’s “deliberative conversations,” and directed further questions to the White House.
The group chat also included a dissent from Mr. Vance, who called the timing of the Yemen operation a “mistake.” He and Mr. Hegseth both argued in the chat that European countries benefited from the U.S. Navy’s efforts to protect shipping lanes from Houthi attacks.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Mr. Vance wrote before the operation. He said he was “willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself.”
But he added that “I just hate bailing Europe out again.”
Mr. Hegseth replied: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” But, he said, “I think we should go.”
During his first term, Mr. Trump repeatedly said Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival in the 2016 election, should have been imprisoned for using a private email server to communicate with her staff and others while she was secretary of state. Mr. Waltz, for his part, posted on social media in June 2023: “Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing.”
In his many television appearances before he became defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth also excoriated Mrs. Clinton for using a private email server. Across social media on Monday, those criticisms were reappearing. “Hey @petehegseth_DOD, this you?” read one post, accompanying a video of Mr. Hegseth on Fox Business saying that Mrs. Clinton “betrayed her country” for “convenience.”
Mrs. Clinton, for her part, reposted the Atlantic story on social media with one comment: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Reporting was contributed by Michael Crowley, Adam Goldman, Maya C. Miller and Minho Kim.
The U.S. Justice Department said tonight that it intends to invoke a rare legal doctrine known as the state secrets privilege in an effort to avoid disclosing detailed data about two flights of Venezuelan migrants that the Trump administration sent to El Salvador this month. The judge overseeing the case had asked for the flight data to determine whether the administration had violated his order stopping the flights from leaving the United States.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, dismissed the idea that there should be additional investigations or discipline for Trump administration officials involved in the Signal chat where they discussed secret war plans in the presence of a journalist. “I’m told they’re doing an investigation to find out how that number was included, and that should be that,” Johnson told reporters at the Capitol. “I’m not sure that it requires much additional attention.”
President Trump yanked the Secret Service detail from Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary during the Biden administration, a spokesman for the Secret Service said. Before President Joseph R. Biden Jr. left office, he extended Mayorkas’s Secret Service detail, which was set to expire in July. Last week, Trump abruptly revoked Secret Service protection for Biden’s two children.
Investigators looking at a burned Tesla Cybertruck in Seattle earlier this month.Credit...Lindsey Wasson/Associated Press
President Trump has suggested attacks against Tesla are a coordinated effort to intimidate the billionaire Elon Musk, but an internal intelligence assessment did not support that claim and warned against conflating legal protests against Mr. Musk with vandalism to his property.
The attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities “appear to have been conducted by lone offenders, and all known incidents occurred at night, making identification and arrest of the actors difficult,” officials with the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security wrote in an intelligence bulletin dated March 21 and obtained by The New York Times.
The initial assessment, shared with law enforcement agencies across the country and subject to change as investigations proceed, was based on an analysis of vandalism investigations in nine states over the past two months. It concluded that the attacks, which included firing gunshots, spraying graffiti, smashing windows and setting vehicles on fire, were “rudimentary” and not intended to injure people.
The people taking these actions “may perceive these attacks as victimless property crimes,” but their “tactics can cause accidental or intentional bodily harm” to bystanders and first responders, the officials wrote in the report.
While law enforcement agencies should aggressively pursue people committing those acts, they should not investigate “constitutionally protected activity” directed at Mr. Musk, who has overseen a far-reaching effort to reduce the size and function of the federal government, they added.
Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi described the Tesla attacks as “domestic terrorism.” The director of the F.B.I., Kash Patel, reiterated that assessment on Monday, saying it was investigating what he described as an increase in violent activity.
The bulletin did not explicitly identify the vandalism as “domestic violent extremism,” the term the government uses to describe domestic terrorism, although it cited political motives for the attacks. Its only mention of domestic violent extremism was an assessment of the difficulty in determining extremists’ “intent to commit violence.”
Mr. Trump suggested last week the vandalism was paid for “by people very highly political on the left,” without providing evidence.
A few days later, Ms. Bondi said she would prosecute “those operating behind the scenes to coordinate and fund these crimes,” echoing Mr. Trump’s claim.
A spokesman for Ms. Bondi said in a text message that the report “could not possibly include all the current information” given that the investigation was continuing, adding that leaks to the news media could “jeopardize serious terrorism investigations.”
Ms. Bondi has often praised and defended Mr. Musk, whom she has described as one of her close friends. On Sunday, Ms. Bondi suggested she might investigate Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, for telling attendees at an online anti-Musk rally that the world’s richest man needed to be “taken down” — even though Ms. Crockett said she was calling for political action, not violence.
“She is an elected public official, so she needs to tread very carefully because nothing will happen to Elon Musk, and we’re going to fight to protect all of the Tesla owners throughout this country,” Ms. Bondi said of Ms. Crockett during an appearance on Fox.
Mr. Patel echoed Mr. Trump and his allies in denouncing the vandalism.
“This is domestic terrorism,” he wrote on X. “Those responsible will be pursued, caught, and brought to justice.”
The attacks on Tesla facilities have intensified as opposition to Mr. Musk has grown.
Police arrested a 26-year-old woman a week ago for spraypainting anti-Musk messages on the front windows of a Tesla facility in Buffalo Grove, Ill. That same day, vandals broke windows and defaced a dealership in the San Diego area with swastikas and slogans.
Later in the week, unknown attackers fired more than a dozen shots at a Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore., damaging some of the vehicles and store windows, followed by the firebombing of several Cybertrucks at a Tesla facility in Kansas City.
On Monday, several unexploded incendiary devices were found at a Tesla dealership in Austin that has been the site of anti-Musk protests. They were removed without incident.
Republican senators returning to the Capitol after a week in their home states are facing a barrage of questions about Trump administration officials having shared classified war plans over the public messaging app Signal. Many of them have said they are concerned, but most are withholding judgment until they can receive a full briefing and talk to the individuals involved, who include Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“There are always two sides to the story, but it’s a concern,” Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Definitely we’ll be looking into it.”
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, called the idea that Trump administration officials had discussed classified information on a nonsecure platform “extremely troubling and serious.”
Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota said he had read The Atlantic article about the unsecure group chat and would wait to receive a formal briefing before making up his mind. But he did tell reporters, “I do not share classified information on Signal.”
President Trump at a cabinet meeting at the White House on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Trump said the planned trips to Greenland by several senior members of his administration later this week were “purely friendly.”
“People from Greenland are asking us to go,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Monday. “We have many, many requests from many, many people.”
But Greenland made clear that its officials were not among those who requested the visits.
“Just for the record, Naalakkersuisut, the government of Greenland, has not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official,” the government posted on its official Facebook page.
In an interview with a Greenlandic newspaper published on Sunday, the territory’s prime minister, Mute B. Egede, called the trips “highly aggressive.”
Mr. Trump did not specify who had asked his representatives to visit Greenland, but Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Usha Vance, the second lady, are expected to travel there later this week. Mr. Waltz is expected to travel with the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, and plans to tour an American military base.
Mr. Egede was particularly incensed about Mr. Waltz’s planned visit.
“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” he asked in the newspaper interview. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
He added: “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission — and the pressure will increase.”
Ms. Vance is expected to travel separately and make several cultural stops, including Greenland’s national dogsled race, with one of her sons. The race’s organizers said they did not invite Ms. Vance but the event is open to the public.
Spokespeople for the White House, the National Security Council and Ms. Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The trips come as Mr. Trump has continued to call for the United States to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory. In his address to Congress on March 4, he said of Greenland, “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump said that the visits by members of his administration were not “provocation.”
“We’re dealing with a lot of people from Greenland that would like to see something happen with respect to their being properly protected and properly taken care of,” he said. “They’re calling us. We’re not calling them.”
The U.S. delegation’s trip also comes at a delicate moment in Greenland’s politics. The territory’s new government has not yet been formed, as parliamentary elections were just held this month.
Mr. Trump has long been fixated on Greenland: During his first term, he inquired about buying the island. More recently, he has seemed interested in acquiring it by any means necessary. He sees Greenland as vital for U.S. national security interests to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic Circle region. The United States is also interested in the island’s rare earth minerals and other resources.
But Greenland is just part of the president’s broad vision for territorial expansion. He has mused about making Canada the 51st U.S. state, derisively calling former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau,” and he wants control of the Panama Canal. Just before taking office, Mr. Trump did not rule out using military or economic coercion as part of a bid to control Greenland or the Panama Canal.
Dr. Susan MonarezCredit...Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
President Trump has selected Susan Monarez, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead the agency permanently.
The president withdrew his first nominee, Dr. Dave Weldon, just hours before his confirmation hearing. If confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Monarez, an infectious-disease researcher, will be the first nonphysician to lead the agency in more than 50 years.
“Americans have lost confidence in the C.D.C. due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement,” the president wrote on Truth Social, adding that Dr. Monarez would work with the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to address the chronic disease epidemic and restore the agency’s accountability.
“As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr. Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Dr. Monarez, 50, assumed the acting director position a few days after Mr. Trump took office in January, leaving her perch as deputy director of a new federal biomedical research agency created during the Biden administration.
Dr. Monarez was expected to serve until Mr. Trump’s first choice for the job, Dr. Weldon, could be confirmed. But after Mr. Trump decided to withdraw the nomination, Republican aides in the Senate said that Dr. Weldon had failed to impress them with a plan for the agency.
Dr. Weldon blamed two Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — for turning against him.
Some experts said Dr. Monarez marked a sharp contrast to Dr. Weldon, whose skeptical views on childhood vaccines aligned with those of Mr. Kennedy and raised alarm in the medical community.
Mr. Kennedy’s response to a growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico, including his lukewarm recommendation of vaccination, has drawn considerable criticism. Dr. Monarez is a biosecurity expert who endorsed the Covid vaccines, and her selection may signal a growing impatience with anti-vaccine sentiment.
“She has a strong reputation as a solid researcher and expert in infectious diseases,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
“She clearly understands public health and the role governmental public health plays,” he said. “I believe the public health community can work with her in a positive manner.”
But Dr. Monarez has spent weeks away from Atlanta, where the agency is headquartered. She has not attended the agency’s all-hands meetings or offered reassurance to employees unsettled by the tumult of the past weeks, according to several C.D.C. employees who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
A comment section on the agency’s internal website was quickly deleted after staff members began to note that they wanted more communication from her.
Center directors have been interpreting the president’s executive orders and various court instructions with little input from the director, the officials said.
Instead, the acting director’s office has served as a conduit for directives from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services.
For example, she has been working with the cost-cutting initiative known as the Department of Government Efficiency to plan reductions to the agency, according to a former official with knowledge of the matter.
And when the Trump administration ordered the C.D.C. to take down pages from its website containing phrases like “L.G.B.T.Q.” and “transgender,” Dr. Monarez did not resist nor attempt to preserve important data, according to three people with knowledge of the events, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Yunseo Chung moved to the United States with her family from South Korea when she was 7 years old and was valedictorian of her high school. Credit...CLEAR
A 21-year-old Columbia University student who has lived in the United States since she was a child sued President Trump and other high-ranking administration officials on Monday after immigration officials tried to arrest and deport her.
The student, Yunseo Chung, is a legal permanent resident and junior who has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school. The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism.
Administration officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, cited the same rationale in explaining the arrest this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate of the university and permanent resident who is being held in Louisiana.
Unlike Mr. Khalil, Ms. Chung does not appear to have been a prominent figure in the demonstrations that shook the school last year. But she was one of several students arrested this year in connection with a protest at Barnard College.
Ms. Chung, a high school valedictorian who moved to the United States with her family from South Korea when she was 7, has not been detained by ICE. She remains in the country, but her lawyers would not comment on her whereabouts.
Her lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan shows the extensive, if so far unsuccessful, efforts by U.S. immigration officials to arrest her. Agents historically prefer to pick up immigrants in jail or prisons. Other types of arrests are more difficult, often requiring hours of research, surveillance and other investigative resources.
But federal agents believed that those efforts were merited in the case of Ms. Chung, according to her lawyers at CLEAR, a legal clinic at the City University of New York.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials visited several residences, called for help from federal prosecutors and searched Ms. Chung’s university housing on March 13.
The involvement of federal prosecutors was particularly notable. According to Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harboring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to noncitizens present in the United States illegally.
That signaled that the searches were related to a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors into Columbia University. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has said that the school is under investigation “for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”
Operating under the aegis of a federal investigation could signal a new tactic. ICE officers and agents often are unable to arrest their targets because they don’t answer the door, and an administrative warrant does not provide agents access to a home.
The Trump administration has prioritized the detention of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, particularly those who are not legal residents. They have sought the arrest of Momodou Taal, a doctoral student in Africana studies at Cornell University, and Ranjani Srinivasan, another Columbia University student who left the country for Canada after learning that her student visa had been revoked.
But the attempted arrest of Ms. Chung, like the detention of Mr. Khalil, appears to be part of a new front in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown — targeting immigrants who are farther along in their paths to citizenship.
In their lawsuit, Ms. Chung’s lawyers asked that a judge bar the government from taking enforcement action against Ms. Chung or from detaining her, transferring her to another location or removing her from the United States. They also asked the judge to bar the government from targeting any noncitizen for deportation based on constitutionally protected speech and pro-Palestinian advocacy.
One of Ms. Chung’s lawyers, Naz Ahmad, said that the administration’s “efforts to punish and suppress speech it disagrees with smack of McCarthyism.”
“Like many thousands of students nationwide, Yunseo raised her voice against what is happening in Gaza and in support of fellow students facing unfair discipline,” said Ms. Ahmad, a co-director of CLEAR. “It can’t be the case that a straight-A student who has lived here most of her life can be whisked away and potentially deported, all because she dares to speak up.”
Asenior press representative for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Ms. Chung had “engaged in concerning conduct, including when she was arrested by N.Y.P.D. during a pro-Hamas protest at Barnard College. She is being sought for removal proceedings under the immigration laws.”
The statement added that Ms. Chung would have an opportunity to present her case before an immigration judge and said that ICE would “investigate individuals engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.”
Press representatives for the secretary of state and the Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Chung, who majors in English and gender studies, has participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations since last year. Her lawyers say that she did not speak to reporters, negotiate on behalf of student demonstrators, or in any other way take a leadership position.
She was, however, accused by the university of joining other students in posting fliers that pictured members of the board of trustees with the phrase “wanted for complicity in genocide.” According to the lawsuit, the school did not find that Ms. Chung had violated any of its “applicable policies.”
The dizzying sequence of events that appears to have prompted ICE agents to show up at her house appears to have begun this month.
On March 5, Ms. Chung protested outside a Barnard College building where pro-Palestinian student demonstrators were holding a sit-in. She was arrested by police officers, given a desk appearance ticket on the misdemeanor charge of obstructing governmental administration and released.
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Ms. Chung was arrested in a protest at Barnard College. The Trump administration has prioritized the detention of students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.Credit...Marco Postigo Storel for The New York Times
Around that time, according to the lawsuit, someone identifying herself as “Audrey with the police” texted Ms. Chung. When a lawyer for Ms. Chung called the number, the woman said that she was an agent with ICE, that the State Department was free to revoke Ms. Chung’s residency status and that there was an administrative warrant for her arrest.
At the same time, Columbia University’s public safety office emailed Ms. Chung to inform her that the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan had been in touch, repeating that ICE officials were seeking Ms. Chung’s arrest.
On March 10, Perry Carbone, a high-ranking lawyer in the federal prosecutor’s office, told Ms. Ahmad, Ms. Chung’s attorney, that the secretary of state, Mr. Rubio, had revoked Ms. Chung’s visa. Ms. Ahmad responded that Ms. Chung was not in the country on a visa and was a permanent resident. According to the lawsuit, Mr. Carbone responded that Mr. Rubio had “revoked that” as well.
The conversation echoed an exchange between Mr. Khalil’s lawyers and the immigration agents who arrested him and who did not initially appear to be aware of his residency status.
After his arrest, Mr. Khalil was swiftly transferred, first to New Jersey and ultimately to Louisiana, where he has been detained since. The statute that the Trump administration used to justify his detention and Ms. Chung’s potential deportation says that the secretary of state can move against noncitizens whose presence he has reasonable grounds to believe threatens the country’s foreign policy agenda. Homeland security officials have since added other allegations against Mr. Khalil.
Mr. Rubio’s memo targeting Mr. Khalil also included Ms. Chung’s name, according to a person with knowledge of its contents.
In Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, her lawyers accused the government of obtaining warrants “under false pretenses,” suggesting that the search under the harboring statute was merely a pretext for an attempt to detain Ms. Chung and another student whom the suit did not name. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on the claims involving the office and Mr. Carbone.
President Trump announced that he would nominate Susan Monarez, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lead it permanently. Earlier this month, Trump withdrew the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon, a Republican and former congressman, just hours before his Senate confirmation hearing as to be held.
The S&P 500 jumped about 1.8 percent today, a rally fueled by signs that Trump’s next round of tariffs might be softened. “I may give a lot of countries breaks,” Trump said on Monday, while stressing that reciprocal tariffs would still be “substantial.” The tech-heavy Nasdaq also rose 2.3 percent. Investors are worried that tariffs could reignite inflation and prompt an economic slowdown, so they’re welcoming this indication that the Trump administration might dial back the tariffs’ scope.
Also worth noting: Tesla shares rose sharply today, ending the day nearly 12 percent higher — the company’s biggest daily gain since Trump’s election. The jump comes after Tesla shares plunged earlier this month, as investors assessed the impact of falling sales and increasing protests over the high-profile political role that Elon Musk has taken on.
President Trump has complained for nearly a decade that he hasn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.Credit...Pool photo by Angela Weiss
He has built lavish clubs and gold-encrusted skyscrapers. He won the White House not once but twice. He has leveraged his power to exact retribution on political opponents, corporate executives and world leaders.
And yet, one accolade has eluded President Trump, and the leader of the free world has made no secret about how irritated he is by what he sees as a snub.
“They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize,” Mr. Trump said last month during a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office. “It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.”
For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump has publicly and privately complained that he has yet to win the prestigious prize. He has mentioned the award dozens of times in interviews, speeches and campaign rallies dating back to his first term. And as he presses for cease-fire deals in Ukraine and the Middle East, current and former advisers say the award is looming large in his mind.
“The Nobel Peace Prize is illegitimate if President Trump — the ultimate peace president — is denied his rightful recognition of bringing harmony across the world,” Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, said in a statement.
In many ways, Mr. Trump’s public jockeying for the prize reflects his focus on accolades, praise and acceptance — and a burning desire to best his predecessors. President Barack Obama won the prize less than nine months after taking office in 2009 for confronting “the great climatic challenges,” a decision that elicited worldwide controversy.
In accepting the award, Mr. Obama noted that his “accomplishments are slight” compared with those of other winners. Mr. Trump has not forgotten that, and he is still waiting for his invitation to Norway.
“The center of his public life is the greater glory of Donald Trump, and the Nobel Peace Prize would be a nice thing to hang on the wall,” said John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser who had a falling-out with the president late in his first term.
“He saw that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize and felt if Obama got it for not doing anything, why should he not get it?” Mr. Bolton said of Mr. Trump. (Less than 12 hours after being sworn in for his second term, Mr. Trump revoked Mr. Bolton’s Secret Service protection.)
In the final months of his 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked Mr. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, complaining that he did not deserve the award.
“If I were named Obama, I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds,” Mr. Trump said during a speech at the Detroit Economic Club in October.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama declined to comment.
A wide variety of people can nominate someone for the prize, and Mr. Trump has received multiple nominations from supporters over the years. Last year, Representative Claudia Tenney, a Republican from New York, nominated Mr. Trump for his work on the Abraham Accords, which established ties between Israel and four Arab countries. This month, Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican from California, said he was nominating Mr. Trump for his work to secure peace in the Middle East.
Some of Mr. Trump’s top aides have also supported the president’s campaign for the award, often bringing it up unprompted in venues where the president is likely to hear, like Fox News or the Conservative Political Action Conference.
In his inaugural address, Mr. Trump said his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
Amid the flurry of executive orders he has signed to dismantle federal agencies, speed up deportations and impose tariffs, the president has tried to bolster that legacy. He has negotiated the release of Americans in Russia, Belarus and Afghanistan, moved closer to a broader cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine and tried to work to end the conflict in the Middle East.
Last week, Mr. Trump helped broker an agreement between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for a mutual pause in attacks on energy targets for 30 days.
But critics say Mr. Trump’s effort to secure peace comes at a cost, arguing he is often aligning himself with aggressors. After a contentious meeting last month with Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office, for example, Mr. Trump temporarily suspended the delivery of all U.S. military aid to Ukraine.
“I am very critical about what America is doing just now about Russia and Ukraine,” Magnus Jacobsson, a member of the Swedish Parliament who nominated the government of the United States for the award in 2020, said in an interview from Lviv, Ukraine. “He’s not working for peace between Russia and Ukraine. He’s working for more conflict, a more complicated situation, and we in Europe, probably nobody is really happy now.”
In 2020, Mr. Trump called Mr. Jacobsson to thank him for the nomination, which Mr. Jacobsson submitted for the United States, Kosovo and Serbia. The Trump administration had helped negotiate an economic mobilization deal between Kosovo and Serbia, two formerly warring countries. But Mr. Jacobsson said Mr. Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine was not deserving of the prize.
Juan Manuel Santos, who won the Nobel Peace Prize as president of Colombiain 2016, seemed skeptical of Mr. Trump’s case for the award — at least right now.
“We still don’t have peace, so I don’t think right now there are many arguments in favor of this desire,” he said in an interview.
He added: “I don’t think he or anybody will win the Nobel Peace Prize simply by working to earn that prize. People throughout history have won the Nobel Peace Prize because of what they do and because of their real motivations to have peace. I hope that is the circumstance here. If he succeeds, then he might be a good candidate for the peace prize.”
Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.
A correction was made on
March 24, 2025
:
An earlier version of this article misstated when President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was less than nine months after he took office, not less than eight.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected].Learn more
Trump Says Hyundai’s New U.S. Investments Prove His Tariffs Work
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Hyundai Motor, a South Korean conglomerate known for its automobiles, announced on Monday that it would make investments to expand manufacturing in the United States.CreditCredit...Olivier Matthys/EPA, via Shutterstock
Hyundai Motor, a South Korean conglomerate known for its automobiles, will invest $21 billion to expand manufacturing in the United States in what President Trump said was proof that his tariff policies were creating jobs.
The company, which also produces steel, said on Monday that the investment through 2028 would include $6 billion for a steel factory in Louisiana that would employ 1,300 people and for other projects to supply Hyundai factories with parts and materials.
The company will also spend $9 billion to expand production of Hyundai, Kia and Genesis vehicles in the United States. The rest of the money will be used for projects that include expanding supplies of renewable energy, building more electric vehicle chargers and conducting research on robots and autonomous driving.
“Money is pouring in,” Mr. Trump said at the White House in an event that included Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Euisun Chung, the executive chair of Hyundai. “This investment is a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work.”
Mr. Trump has threatened to impose new tariffs on a wide range of foreign goods, including automobiles, and by promising to invest more in the United States, Hyundai may help South Korea avoid tariffs or at least be subject to lower duties than other countries.
Hyundai already has significant investments in the United States. Last year, the company began producing electric vehicles at a factory near Savannah, Ga., that cost $7.6 billion to build. On Wednesday, Hyundai plans to host an event to show off the complex.
Along with SK On, a South Korean battery maker, Hyundai is investing another $5 billion to produce electric vehicle batteries near Atlanta.
Mr. Chung gave Mr. Trump credit for the Georgia investments, saying they were initiated when the president visited Seoul in 2019 during his first term. “We are really proud to stand with you and proud to build the future together,” Mr. Chung said.
The Hyundai factories in Georgia also benefited from subsidies passed by Democrats during the Biden administration, although that support was not mentioned at the White House on Monday.
Hyundai also makes vehicles in Montgomery, Ala. Kia builds cars in West Point, Ga., southwest of Atlanta.
The factories provide Hyundai with some immunity from tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed or threatened on steel and cars. By reducing Hyundai’s costs from tariffs, the U.S. factories could also give the company a competitive advantage over rivals like Ford Motor and General Motors, which import many of their electric vehicles from Mexico. Mr. Trump has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico next month.
“There are no tariffs if you make your product in America,” said Mr. Trump, who reiterated plans to impose tariffs on imported automobiles in days to come.
Journalists and leaders from Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the NewsGuild-CWA held a news conference on Monday outside the courthouse of the Southern District of New York to discuss a lawsuit challenging funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which effectively shut down government-funded international news outlets.
Eryn Davis
Reporting from New York
“This is beyond existential at this point,” said the chief national correspondent for Voice of America, Steve Herman. “The damage has been done. Even if we are able to go back on the air, it’s going to take time to build back that audience of 360 million, and the void will be filled by the voices of Beijing and the voices of Moscow, the voices of Pyongyang and the voices of Tehran.” Herman filed a petition on Monday in support of the lawsuit.
Eryn Davis
Reporting from New York
The next hearing in the lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of New York, is scheduled for Friday at 10 a.m. before Judge J. Paul Oetken, according to Andrew Celli, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs.
Most of Greenland lies within the Arctic Circle, a region the world’s powers are vying over for its untapped natural resources and its proximity to emerging shipping corridors.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
A delegation from the Trump administration led by Vice President JD Vance traveled to Greenland on Friday, despite the objections of its political leaders, who see the group’s trip as an aggressive escalation of President Trump’s threats to seize the territory, by force if necessary.
Mr. Trump has not hid his intentions for Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, repeating his threats to acquire it through a financial transaction or military force several times since he returned to the Oval Office.
The response of Greenlandic and Danish leaders had been polite but firmly opposed, stating the island was not for sale.
But the visit from the delegation, which also includes Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary, elicited a more agitated response. Prime Minister Mute B. Egede told Sermitsiaq, a local newspaper, that the delegation’s expected arrival, little more than two weeks after Greenland held parliamentary elections, is “highly aggressive,” and “the only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.” And Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, lashed out at the Trump administration on Tuesday, calling it “unacceptable pressure.”
“You cannot make a private visit with official representatives from another country, when the acting Greenlandic government has made it very clear that they do not want a visit at this time,” Ms. Frederiksen added.
Amid the backlash, the Trump administration did change its itinerary. Mr. Vance was not initially supposed to be on the trip, but announced on Tuesday that he would join the delegation, while plans for Usha Vance, the second lady, to attend a dog sledding race were scrapped. The group is focusing the trip on a visit to a U.S. Space Force base on Greenland’s northwest coast.
On Wednesday, Jesper Steinmetz, a correspondent with the Danish station TV2, reported that U.S. officials had knocked on doors in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, to try to find people interested in meeting Ms. Vance, but no one was willing.
So why is Mr. Trump so determined to have Greenland? Here’s a window into his thinking.
Greenland is in strategically important territory.
Most of Greenland lies within the Arctic Circle, a region that the world’s powers are vying for over for its untapped natural resources and its proximity to emerging shipping corridors that would accelerate global trade. Already, melting Arctic ice has transformed the region that was once largely unnavigable into an area of competitive commerce, as more ships traverse the Arctic Circle and countries with land in the region scramble to lay claim to as much of the seabed as possible.
Routes between Asia and Europe, or Asia and the United States, are about 40 percent shorter through the Arctic than either the Suez or Panama Canals, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. That makes the question of who controls the seas there critical for both financial and security purposes, especially given the claimants also happen to be rival geopolitical superpowers.
Only five countries can claim to have an extended continental shelf into the Arctic: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark via Greenland, and the United States via Alaska. Acquiring Greenland would give the United States a significantly bigger claim in the Arctic.
Trump has said it is vital for national security.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” Mr. Trump said in March during an address to Congress, adding the territory was “very, very important for military security.”
The United States has had troops in Greenland since World War II, and keeps a small missile defense base there called Pituffik Space Base — formerly Thule Air Base, before Mr. Trump renamed it during his first administration. The delegation will be touring that base on Friday.
It is possible that base could become part of the “Golden Dome” missile defense system, modeled after Israel’s Iron Dome system, that Mr. Trump has said he wants to build to protect the entirety of the United States from potential threats from adversaries, especially China. In an executive order, Mr. Trump told Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, to produce the plans for that missile defense shield by March 28.
But there are market-based threats Mr. Trump is concerned with as well. Russia and China are already cooperating on Arctic shipping routes, and with Russia’s extensive presence in the region — it has the largest area of Arctic coastline — that partnership threatens to remain the dominant economic force in the area.
Greenland could be a rich source for rare earth minerals and energy.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Arctic holds 13 percent of undiscovered oil resources and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas, most of it offshore. Controlling Greenland would give the United States an expanded claim to those seabed resources.
But Greenland also has huge stores of rare earth minerals that are vital to the production of batteries, cellphones, electric vehicles and other technology — and the Trump administration has been looking globally to augment its rare earth mineral holdings.
Rare earth minerals have been an instrumental part of an agreement that the United States has been trying to strike with Ukraine. Greenland’s stores of cobalt, nickel, copper, lithium, zirconium and other minerals have proven challenging to mine, but there is another incentive for the United States to seek to control that market: China.
China dominates the world’s raw mineral market, and has already attempted to make inroads in Greenland. Acquiring the territory would allow Mr. Trump to check Beijing’s efforts to exploit minerals there and expand America’s holdings.
Climate change could soon make Greenland a hot commodity.
Part of the reason it has been difficult to exploit Greenland’s resources to date is that it is so darn cold. But with climate change, melting ice is creating new opportunities for resource exploitation. In the last 30 years, about 11,000 square miles of ice sheet have melted, an area about the size of Maryland.
Denmark has also recognized the potential of Greenland’s resources to be vital in the global transition to greener forms of energy. The local population sees the potential for an economic boon from mining as helpful in its bid for independence, which a majority of the population wants.
But the development of the industry has been slow. Greenland has taken steps to limit the potential for environmentally destructive mining practices through laws, including a ban on uranium mining in 2021. But those could be overturned if the United States acquires the territory.
A correction was made on
March 25, 2025
:
An earlier version of this article misstated how much of the world’s undiscovered resources are in the Arctic. It holds 13 percent of undiscovered oil resources, not gas resources.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at [email protected].Learn more
Fired employees from the Education Department were greeted by supporters after retrieving personal belongings from the Education Department building in Washington on Monday.
President Trump said he had no knowledge of the article posted Monday in The Atlantic that revealed top administration officials had discussed sensitive national security matters in a Signal group chat that included a journalist.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, adding, “You’re telling me about it for the first time.”
Trump is celebrating Hyundai at the White House for announcing a $20 billion investment in the United States, including more than $5 billion to build a steel plant in Louisiana.
“This investment is a clear demonstration that tariffs very strongly work,” he said, flanked by the state’s governor, Jeff Landry, the Louisiana congressional delegation and top Hyundai executives.
Chevron has two more months to produce oil in Venezuela after the Treasury granted the company a reprieve on Monday from an order by the Trump administration to wind down operations by April 3. The second-largest U.S. oil company may now continue to extract oil in the country and sell it to the United States through late May.
Chevron is on the clock because the Trump administration is revoking a license the company received in 2022 that allowed it to expand operations in Venezuela. Chevron’s extension came as Trump threatened a 25 percent tariff on other countries that buy Venezuela’s oil.
The order comes a week after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from banning transgender people from serving in the military. During his first term, President Trump’s transgender ban was also blocked by two federal judges. An estimated 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender.
Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a conservative ally of President Trump and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said he would hold hearings next week as a means to attack Judge James E. Boasberg, who is blocking Trump from using a wartime law to deport migrants to notorious prison complexes in El Salvador.
“You have the judge saying this crazy decision,” Jordan said of Boasberg’s ruling, adding that “it really starts to look like Judge Boasberg is operating purely political against the president. And that’s what we want to have hearings on.”
The U.N. has advised all of its employees who work at its New York headquarters, as well as their family members, to carry U.N. identification cards and a copy of their passport page that contains their visa, because they are at risk of being stopped by immigration officials, according to a copy of an email seen by The New York Times.
President Trump has pledged to arrest and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and ICE agents have arrested even American-born citizens during raids. Stéphane Dujarric, a U.N. spokesman, said this was the first time the U.N. had sent such an advisory.
Two senior U.N. officials said the directive came after ICE agents stopped several U.N. staff members, inciting anxiety that they were being targeted. Last week in New York, a marked van with the ICE logo parked on First Avenue, near the United Nations headquarters, for an extended period of time, according to one of the U.N. officials.
Trump said trips to Greenland this week by members of his administration were “not provocation” even as he continued to call for the U.S. to annex the territory. “We’ve been invited,” Trump said of the Greenland visits, though he declined to specify who invited the second lady, Usha Vance, and the national security adviser Mike Waltz. Greenland’s top officials have criticized the trips, which Prime Minister Mute B. Egede called “highly aggressive.”
President Trump said that any country that purchase oil from Venezuela would be forced to pay a tariff of 25 percent on any exports they send to the United States.Credit...Matias Delacroix/Associated Press
President Trump issued an executive order on Monday to crack down on countries that buy Venezuelan oil by imposing tariffs on the goods those nations send into the United States, claiming that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent criminals and murderers into America.
In the order, the president said the government of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, and the Tren de Aragua gang, a transnational criminal organization, posed a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.
On or after April 2, a tariff of 25 percent may be imposed on all goods imported into the United States from any country that imports Venezuelan oil, either directly or indirectly through third parties, the order said.
The order said the secretaries of state, Treasury, commerce and homeland security, as well as the trade representative, would determine at their discretion what tariffs to impose. The tariffs would expire one year after the last date the Venezuelan oil was imported, or earlier if Trump officials so chose, it said.
This unconventional use of tariffs could further disrupt the global oil trade as buyers of Venezuelan oil seek alternatives. The United States and China have been the top buyers of Venezuelan oil in recent months, according to Rystad Energy, a research and consulting firm. India and Spain also buy a small amount of crude from the South American country.
But in the case of China, Venezuela’s oil makes up such a small portion of the country’s imports that the threat of higher tariffs will probably cause China to look elsewhere for oil, said Jorge León, a Rystad Energy analyst.
American purchases of Venezuelan oil are poised to wind down after the Trump administration said it would revoke a license that allowed Chevron to produce oil there.
The Trump administration on Monday gave Chevron, the second largest U.S. oil company, another two months to produce oil in Venezuela and sell it to the United States. The administration had earlier ordered Chevron to wind down its operations by April 3.
The U.S. and Venezuelan governments have been sparring over Mr. Trump’s plans to deport migrants from the United States. Venezuela announced on Saturday that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration to resume accepting deportation flights of migrants who were in the United States illegally.
“Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse,” the president wrote.
Mr. Trump is planning to impose other new tariffs globally on April 2, when he will introduce what he is calling “reciprocal tariffs.” He has said the United States will raise the tariffs it charges on other countries to match their levies, while also taking into consideration other behaviors that affect trade, like taxes and currency manipulation. The president has taken to calling this “liberation day,” a term he repeated on Monday.
Mr. Trump called the new levies he threatened on buyers of Venezuelan oil “secondary tariffs,” a label that echoed “secondary sanctions,” which are penalties imposed on other countries or parties that trade with nations under sanctions.
Some trade and sanctions experts said existing secondary sanctions associated with countries such as Russia and Iran already were not well enforced, and questioned whether the United States would have the capacity to pull off new tariff-based penalties.
“Given the limited enforcement of existing secondary sanctions, where we have a precedent, I’m not sure how realistic effective deployment of this strategy is,” said Daniel Tannebaum, a partner at the consulting firm Oliver Wyman and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.
But other experts said the strategy could help the United States to avoid the type of financial sanctions on foreign banks that could threaten financial stability. Using tariffs could help the United States to be seen as taking tough action without incurring those risks, they said.
With typical secondary sanctions, individuals or companies cannot buy oil or other products under sanctions from a blacklisted country. Otherwise, businesses could be subjected to U.S. sanctions themselves, facing fines or being cut off from the U.S. financial system.
But Mr. Trump and his advisers have said they think such sanctions can threaten the pre-eminence of the dollar if they are overused, by encouraging other countries to find alternative currencies. They have talked about using tariffs instead.
In his confirmation hearing in January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said tariffs, in addition to raising revenue and rerouting supply chains, could provide an alternative to traditional financial sanctions.
Mr. Trump “believes that we’ve probably gotten over our skis a bit on sanctions and that sanctions may be driving countries out of the use of the U.S. dollar,” Mr. Bessent said. Tariffs could be used instead, he said.
Many of the cabinet secretaries are promoting efforts to cut spending in their agencies, with some heaping praise on Elon Musk’s effort, the Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump said it’s not “popular” to make cuts, and conceded, “I have no idea how it plays out in the public.” But, he concluded, “It has to be done.”
The praise for Elon Musk was a marked change from the last cabinet gathering, which turned contentious when officials challenged Musk. No reporters were present at that meeting earlier in the month.
“Elon’s a patriot,” Trump said at the end of Monday’s meeting. “We want to thank you very much for the job you’re doing.” The whole cabinet then applauded for Musk.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, criticized the judge who had issued the temporary restraining order.Credit...Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
The Trump administration said on Monday that it planned to extradite a handful of Venezuelan men to Chile after declaring them subject to the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law whose novel use is the subject of a pitched court battle.
In a statement, Justice Department officials said three men had been declared “alien enemies” and would be sent to Chile to face criminal charges there. The men are Venezuelan citizens, though one is also a citizen of Ecuador and another a citizen of Colombia.
Extradition is a long-established, frequently used process of sending accused criminals to face charges in another country. By citing the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration seems to be highlighting its aggressive posture on the contested legal issue without taking steps that might be deemed to violate a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge.
Because the men are being extradited to face charges in a foreign country, their cases are different from the hurried deportations of more than 100 Venezuelans this month and will be the subject of a federal appeals court hearing Monday afternoon.
In the announcement on Monday, the administration again criticized the judge who issued that order, James E. Boasberg. “We would have already removed these violent gang members to Chile to face justice were it not for the nationwide injunction imposed by a single judge,” said Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general. He added, “We hope common sense and justice will prevail.”
The extradition announcement comes as courts are wrestling with President Trump’s invocation of the law this month to send more than 100 Venezuelans to a giant prison complex in El Salvador. Civil rights groups have challenged the deportations, saying the men did not receive due process, and contest the accusation that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
In invoking the 1798 law meant to expel invaders, the Trump administration has argued that the gang acts in coordination with Venezuela’s ruling party and is therefore subject to summary arrest and deportation. Civil rights groups have argued in court that the administration is misusing the law and violating immigrants’ rights.
The Justice Department said one of the men was currently in a Texas prison and wanted in Chile for extortion, kidnapping resulting in homicide and criminal association. The other two men, who are wanted on kidnapping charges, were in U.S. custody, officials said.
President Trump signed an executive order last week directing the education secretary to begin dismantling the Education Department.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
The Trump administration’s campaign to dismantle the Education Department drew a pair of court challenges on Monday, as opponents called the plan an attempt to evade congressional authority.
The first lawsuit was filed in federal court in Massachusetts by the American Federation of Teachers, a teachers union; the American Association of University Professors; and two public school districts in Massachusetts. Within hours the N.A.A.C.P., the National Education Association union and other critics had brought a case of their own in federal court in Maryland.
The challenges came four days after President Trump signed an executive order that directed the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the department.”
The day after the order, Mr. Trump announced that the Small Business Administration would assume control of the government’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio, and that the Health and Human Services Department would oversee nutrition programs and special education services.
The Education Department, created in 1979, cannot be closed without Congress’s consent. The Massachusetts lawsuit argues that the Trump administration’s moves since it came to power in January, including an effort to roughly halve the department’s work force, “will interfere with the department’s ability to carry out its statutorily required functions.”
Ilana Krepchin, chairwoman of the Somerville, Mass., school committee, which is a plaintiff in the Massachusetts case, said that the Education Department was a “cornerstone of equitable public education.”
“Dismantling it would cause real harm — not only to our students and schools, but to communities across the country,” Ms. Krepchin said.
Madi Biedermann, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said that all federally mandated programs would remain in the agency and that the administration had promised to work with Congress in order to close the department.
“Instead of focusing on the facts and offering helpful solutions to improve student outcomes, the union is once again misleading the American public to keep their stranglehold on the American education bureaucracy,” Ms. Biedermann said, referring to the American Federation of Teachers.
Top Republicans on Capitol Hill — including Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions — have pledged to support the president’s push, which has been embraced by some right-leaning groups.
But rank-and-file lawmakers are expected to face significant pressure, both for and against the plan, before any vote is held.
Charles L. Welch, the president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said last week that he was “dismayed” by Mr. Trump’s order and urged lawmakers to, in effect, defy the White House and help preserve the department.
The Education Department has limited power over what is taught in American classrooms. Its principal jobs are to distribute money to schools, enforce civil rights laws and run the federal student aid program for college students. It has historically played a large role in data collection and education research funding.
It is not clear when any legislation to close or rebuild the department might come to a vote.
In the Maryland case, the N.A.A.C.P. and the N.E.A., the nation’s largest teachers’ union, were among the plaintiffs who argued that the administration’s tactics over the last two months amounted to “a de facto dismantling of the department by executive fiat.”
“Donald Trump’s own secretary of education has acknowledged they can’t legally shut down the Department of Education without Congress,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, which is helping represent the National Education Association in the case.
“Yet that is, for all intents and purposes, exactly what they are doing,” he added. “It’s a brazen violation of the law that will upend the lives of countless students and families.”
Derrick Johnson, president and chief executive of the N.A.A.C.P., accused Mr. Trump of doing far more than trying to shrink or shutter an agency.
“Education is power,” Mr. Johnson said. Referring to Mr. Trump, he added, “He is deliberately destroying the pathway many Americans have to a better life.”
The N.A.A.C.P. and the other challengers in Maryland asked a federal judge to prohibit the Education Department and Ms. McMahon “from continuing their dismantling of the department and implementing the March 20 executive order.”
In a separate, privacy-focused case also in Maryland, a federal judge ruled on Monday that the Education Department could not supply sensitive data to the Department of Government Efficiency, which is led by Elon Musk.
