Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

Immigrant rights groups are cautioning migrants without legal status about the dangers of obeying the Department of Homeland Security’s directive to register with authorities, group leaders told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Representatives from immigrant groups across the country said the requirement, which a federal judge upheld last week, is an enforcement tool for President Donald Trump’s administration and that following the directive to register could lead to unlawful detention and deportation.

Participants on the call did not explicitly say they were counseling migrants without legal status against complying with the directive, but said people affected should seek legal counsel first.

“This tool is to identify individuals for detention, deportation and to threaten with imprisonment if they do not comply,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said.

“These actions are abhorrent to the values of this country, and we will not stand silent to see cruelty as the official immigration policy of this administration. To our community, our message is that you’re not alone, you have rights, seek legal guidance, and you’re not obligated to provide information that can hurt you or your family.”

Under Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration has sent “innocent people” to detention facilities at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, Salas said.

The administration has detained immigrants of all legal statuses without due process, and ignored court orders to reverse those actions. Advocates on the press call Tuesday said that defies the law.

Immigrants, even without legal status in the country, are “entitled to their day in immigration court,” Nicole Melaku, the executive director of National Partnership for New Americans, said.

The directive, which requires immigrants who have registered with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to always carry with them proof of their registration, would also lead to racial profiling of U.S. citizens, advocates have said.

No reported registrants

Salas said her organization, which is based in Southern California, does not know of anyone who has completed the registration.

The people who are required to register are unclear about whether it is in their interest to comply, and distrust of Trump – who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and has routinely flouted due process for immigrants – is a major obstacle.

“We don’t have anybody who has – that we know – yet registered,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion in our community as to whether to do this or not. What does it mean? What are the risks? And I also want to say that … everything that has come from this administration has actually been harmful, so people are taking that into account.”

Legal fight continuing

U.S. Judge Trevor Neil McFadden, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2017, rejected advocacy groups’ attempt to block the directive, saying in an order last week that the groups hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by it.

But the legal fight against the directive will continue, George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at the immigrant services organization CASA, said.

In addition to a possible appeal of McFadden’s ruling, Escobar said his organizations would watch “very, very closely” how the administration conducts the operation, with special attention to racial profiling, and would not hesitate to bring court challenges.

“We will do everything possible to fight this,” he said. “This may be a show-me-your-papers type of situation where people may be racially profiled, stopped on the street just because they’re speaking in other languages, because they look like an immigrant, and has to be asked to show this registration compliance.”

Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Voters cast their ballots at Fairmont Junior High in Boise during the Idaho primary on May 17, 2022. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)

The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday to require voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, approving a Republican priority over the objections of Democrats who said the bill would only create hurdles for eligible voters without actually improving fraud protection.

The 220-208 vote sent the measure to the U.S. Senate, where it faces an uphill road to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote requirement for most legislation. If enacted, the bill would require states, which are responsible for administering elections, to obtain from people registering to vote in federal elections documents that prove U.S. citizenship.

Acceptable documents under the act include any valid photo ID issued by the federal government, a state or tribe that shows the applicant’s place of birth was the United States, or a combination of a valid government-issued photo ID and another document proving citizenship such as a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization.

Four House Democrats – Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Ed Case of Hawaii and Henry Cuellar of Texas – joined all Republicans present to vote in favor of the bill.

Supporters of the bill say it is needed to keep immigrants in the country without legal status from voting.

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, though some local governments allow noncitizen residents to vote in local elections.

GOP priority

By tackling fraudulent voting and targeting immigrants in the country illegally, the bill addresses two planks of the Republican platform under President Donald Trump. Trump has consistently positioned himself as a hardliner on immigration and continues to voice the debunked claim that fraud caused his 2020 election loss.

During floor debate this week, the bill’s sponsor, Texas Republican Chip Roy, said the measure, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, responded to the message voters sent by electing Trump and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress last year after inaction from Democratic President Joe Biden.

“Republicans are responding to an American people who are tired of the previous administration that was allowing illegals to come into our country, kill our citizens, vote in our elections, undermine our country,” Roy said. “And we are addressing their concerns and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t want to address it.”

Hurdle for citizens

Democrats, though, said the measure was unnecessary to prevent the exceedingly rare cases of noncitizens voting in federal elections and would only make voting harder for citizens who are eligible, including married women who may have changed their name but have not updated their documents.

“I think the gentleman from Texas will be happy to learn that it already is the law that only American citizens can vote in federal elections,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, said following Roy’s remarks. “Our problem with the SAVE Act is that it is an attempt to make it more difficult for women in this country, women who are U.S. citizens, to be able to vote.”

At a virtual press conference Thursday, Democratic secretaries of state – the office in most states responsible for elections administration – highlighted the difficulties it could create for eligible voters.

“Losing your driver’s license or birth certificate, letting your passport expire or even getting married and taking your partner’s last name could all prevent a voter from making their voice heard in free and fair elections if the SAVE Act passes,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said. “Replacing just one of those documents – let alone multiple documents that would be needed to register – takes time and money that not every American has.

“Women who are citizens – who are eligible to vote – should not be stopped at the ballot box by (House Speaker) Mike Johnson and Donald Trump.”

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom) 

The U.S. Education Department has agreed to delay for nearly two weeks enforcement of a disputed directive seeking to ban diversity, equity and inclusion practices, according to a court filing Thursday in the case challenging the order.

The agreement between the department and the groups suing it over the order pauses enforcement until after April 24. According to the agreement, states and local education agencies until then cannot be investigated or asked to provide certification that they are not using DEI, a term for race- and gender-conscious practices, in admissions, programming, training, hiring or scholarships.

Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said the department and the groups reached the agreement Monday.

An April 3 letter from the department demanded states and districts provide certifications they were complying with the order within 10 days or risk losing federal funding. That letter followed a February missive introducing the order.

The National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union sued in New Hampshire federal court last month to block enforcement of the directive.

“This pause in enforcement provides immediate relief to schools across the country while the broader legal challenge continues,” the NEA said in a Thursday statement.

In a written statement, Biedermann said the extension was due to what the department saw as states’ efforts to comply with the order.

“The Department extended the certification requirement on Monday in response to states’ good-faith inquiries to ensure compliance,” Biedermann wrote. “Having voluntarily extended the deadline, commonsense would dictate the Department would not take enforcement action until the deadline had passed.”

Court battle

The groups asked the court to issue an emergency ruling to block enforcement of the department’s order while the case is ongoing.

The agreement effectively grants that request without a court order.

“No school district, state agency, or higher education institution will face investigation or penalties for failure to return the challenged certification that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts do not exist within their curriculums,” the NEA said.

The underlying lawsuit remains ongoing.

The suit challenges the department’s authority to impose restrictions on state K-12 curriculum and says the order limits academic freedom and restricts educators’ ability to teach.

Trump and DEI

President Donald Trump campaigned against progressive cultural positions, including how race, gender and sexuality are handled in public schools.

In the early months of his second presidency, the entire executive branch has moved to restrict DEI initiatives and education policy, which has long been a battleground for such issues, has been a focal point.

The administration has used antidiscrimination requirements to pursue restrictions on DEI initiatives in education, arguing that DEI discriminates against white students.

DEI programs “discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics in clear violation of Title VI,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting head of civil rights, said in an April 3 statement.

A Union Pacific train transports coal through Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah County, Utah. on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. President Donald Trump signed an order on April 8, 2025, aimed at boosting coal production. (Photo by Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch)

An executive order President Donald Trump signed Tuesday to block state-level renewable-energy initiatives set off alarm bells among climate advocates.

But experts and state policy groups said constitutional protections will blunt any effect the order would have on state operations.

The order, one of four Trump signed Tuesday aiming to revitalize the coal industry, directs the U.S. Justice Department to investigate and block enforcement of state laws that restrict fossil fuel production. It specifically targets state and local policies involving climate change, environmental justice and carbon emissions reductions — popular among blue states.

By attempting to strip states of their own authority to make and enforce laws, the order violates basic constitutional principles and would likely be struck down in court, environmental law experts said Wednesday.

Brad Campbell, the president of the New England-based environmental advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation, said in an interview with States Newsroom the order does not cite any federal law or interest the administration is seeking to protect — though the order does mention interstate commerce and an objective to improve national security — revealing it is more about messaging than policymaking.

“This is political theater more than it is law,” Campbell said. “It completely disregards the understanding of federalism that has been in place for centuries and the language of the Constitution itself.”

While the order itself may be unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny, it signals the administration could make demands about climate policy that would have to be obeyed at risk of losing federal cash, advocates said.

Trump officials already have shown an eagerness in their first months for using federal funding as leverage with states, universities and other institutions that are outside the federal government’s control.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Wednesday the order would protect against states assuming the power to regulate international issues like climate change.

“The President is right to ensure that Americans in both red and blue states are not beholden to State overreach stifling American energy that are unconstitutional or contradict federal law,” she said.

Climate action ‘irreconcilable’ with Trump agenda

The order includes a lengthy preamble attempting to justify federal involvement in state and local policymaking, while also noting that state policies focusing on emissions reductions and climate protections are at odds with Trump’s goals.

“These State laws and policies try to dictate interstate and international disputes over air, water, and natural resources; unduly discriminate against out-of-State businesses; contravene the equality of States; and retroactively impose arbitrary and excessive fines without legitimate justification,” the order’s opening section reads.

“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy.  They should not stand.”

At the Tuesday signing ceremony for the order and three others on coal production, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the president that states promoting renewable sources of energy were a major part of the coal industry’s decline.

“One of the biggest problems we have in this space is Democrat states, radical leftist states, enacting policies and enacting an agenda that discriminates against coal, against secure sources of energy,” Scharf said.

The order, though, does little to change the market and technological forces that have led to the coal industry’s decline, Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the environmental group Western Environmental Law Center, said Wednesday.

“I just don’t see how the order … is going to do anything but create confusion and uncertainties for communities that are transitioning away from coal right now,” he said.

“In many respects, it does an injustice to those communities by giving them a false sense of hope that somehow coal mines and coal-fired power plants are suddenly going to be resurrected from the dead or be pushed well beyond their economic and technological lifespan.”

States undeterred

Environmental lawyers and climate advocates said the order does not change the constitutional structure of the U.S. government that empowers states to set their own laws.

Casey Katims, the executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors seeking to prioritize state-focused climate policy, said the group’s members would not be moved by the order.

“The reality is that states continue to enjoy broad, independent constitutional authority to advance solutions to meet the needs of communities, businesses and workers,” Katims said in a Wednesday interview. “The president cannot change the Constitution by fiat.”

The group’s co-chairs, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, said in a Tuesday statement the administration had no power to block state authority and the coalition would be undeterred by the order.

“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” they said. “We are a nation of states — and laws — and we will not be deterred.”

If the Justice Department, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, sues to stop enforcement of state laws, courts would likely reinforce states’ well-understood power to govern themselves, Campbell said.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority that includes three members appointed by Trump and has shown deference to even the most controversial actions of his second presidency, would move to restrain that federal power, Campbell predicted.

“I think the notion that the president can stop enforcement of state laws that don’t align with his political program will be too much of an overreach even for this very Trump-friendly Supreme Court majority,” he said.

Further, he said, even Republican governors, whose party has traditionally advocated for increased states’ rights in relation to the federal government, might object to the intrusion of the executive branch into state policymaking. Allowing action under the order would set a precedent for a future Democratic president to meddle in Republican states, he said.

Federal funding

The lack of legal authority to directly block enforcement of state laws may not keep the Trump administration from exercising power in another way: withholding federal funds from uncooperative states.

The order signals the administration, which has been bold in asserting a power to deny congressionally appropriated funding, could target states over climate policy, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

“Do they have a legal basis? Not really,” he said. “Can they use political weapons, in particular relative to funding, against states that are stepping up on climate action? That is very much a possibility. That is the direction you will see the White House going.”

A group of coal miners watch as President Donald Trump speaks at the White House shortly before signing executive orders on the coal industry on April 8, 2025. (White House livestream)

President Donald Trump signed four executive orders Tuesday aiming to invigorate the U.S. coal industry.

In wide-ranging comments in front of a phalanx of coal miners at the White House, Trump said the orders would revitalize an industry pushed to the brink by Democratic policies that encourage renewable energy.

“This is a very important day to me, because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned, despite the fact that it was just about the best, certainly the best in terms of power, real power,” Trump said.

The orders:

• End a moratorium on leasing federal lands for coal mining;
• Remove Biden administration environmental regulations that Trump said slow approvals of new mining projects;
• Prioritize grid security and reliability; and
• Direct the U.S. Justice Department to block states from enforcing their own regulations on coal.

Two of the orders cite increased energy demand for the power-intensive task of artificial intelligence data processing as the rationale for increasing coal production.

Reopening plans for mines in Montana, Wyoming

A press release from the Interior Department, which oversees resource management on public lands, added that one of the orders reopens plans to build mines in Montana and Wyoming, removes regulatory burdens on coal production and lowers royalty rates coal companies owe for production on federal lands.

Environmental groups cautioned against a renewed federal investment in coal and took particular exception to the provision allowing the federal government to undermine state efforts to move away from the sector.

“Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands,” Tyson Slocum, the energy policy director for the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “States planning to move to cleaner, cheaper energy sources could be forced to keep old coal plants up and running for years, forcing nearby residents to breathe dirty air and harming the climate.”

In a line that appeared ad-libbed, Trump also promised the orders could not be reversed by a future president.

“We’re going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs of the world of politics,” he said. “We’re going to give a guarantee that it’s not going to happen, so that if somebody comes in, they cannot change it at a whim.”

Trump said he’d thought of the idea “about 15 minutes before” getting on stage at the White House.

‘Beautiful, clean coal’

Trump cast the move as a direct rebuke to his Democratic predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and said it was in service of restoring working-class jobs in states like West Virginia.

“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all. And it wasn’t just Biden, it was Obama and others, but we’re doing the exact opposite… We’re going to put the miners back to work.”

A 2024 Biden rule to raise emissions standards on coal plants was unworkable, one of the orders, which reversed the Biden rule, said.

“The Rule requires compliance with standards premised on the application of emissions-control technologies that do not yet exist in a commercially viable form,” the order said. “The Rule therefore raises the unacceptable risk of the shutdown of many coal-fired power plants, eliminating thousands of jobs, placing our electrical grid at risk, and threatening broader, harmful economic and energy security effects.”

With both U.S. senators from West Virginia, Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice, on hand, Trump said the state’s workers rejected Democrats’ vision of transitioning away from their mining identity.

“One thing I learned about the coal miners is that’s what they want to do,” he said. “You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue in a different kind of a job, but they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal. That’s what they love to do.”

Environmental groups slam orders

Even before the orders were signed, environmental advocacy groups panned them as a giveaway to the industry and a reckless move away from attention to the climate crisis.

“Trump’s coal orders take his worship of dirty fossil fuels to a gross and disturbingly reckless new level,” Jason Rylander, the legal director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a written statement. “This is yet another assault on efforts to preserve a livable climate.”

Lena Moffitt, the executive director of environmental group Evergreen Action, said true energy reliability would come from renewable sources.

“Coal is toxic and outdated,” Mofitt said in a statement. “It poisons our air and water, jacks up household energy bills, and is deadly for communities living under the shadow of its smokestacks. If Trump actually cared about meeting rising energy demand, he’d invest in affordable, clean power—not drag us backward to prop up a dying industry.”

Immigration and tariffs

Trump spoke for about 45 minutes and touched on issues beyond energy policy, including his recently enacted tariffs that have rocked world financial markets and the case of a Maryland man erroneously swept up in a deportation operation.

Trump promoted his aggressive immigration policy and referenced the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a man who the administration has admitted was mistakenly deported from Maryland to his native El Salvador despite being granted legal protection to remain in the United States.

The administration sent planeloads of Venezuelan nationals to an El Salvador mega-prison last month, accusing them of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

Without naming Abrego Garcia, Trump referenced a man sent to El Salvador who was not a member of the Venezuelan gang, but said he was a member of a different Latin American gang. The government has produced no evidence to suggest Abrego Garcia is a gang member.

On tariffs, Trump said the taxes on imported goods were already bringing in billions of dollars daily in new federal revenue and were critical to protect U.S. industries.

“We’ve been ripped off and abused by countries for many years with the tariff situation,” he said. “They’ve used tariffs against us. We didn’t use tariffs against them in any way, but we just didn’t use them of any monumental proportion. And so we are doing it now.”

He did not respond to a shouted question about Republican unease with the worldwide tariffs at the close of the White House event.

Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

Immigrant rights groups are cautioning migrants without legal status about the dangers of obeying the Department of Homeland Security’s directive to register with authorities, group leaders told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Representatives from immigrant groups across the country said the requirement, which a federal judge upheld last week, is an enforcement tool for President Donald Trump’s administration and that following the directive to register could lead to unlawful detention and deportation.

Participants on the call did not explicitly say they were counseling migrants without legal status against complying with the directive, but said people affected should seek legal counsel first.

“This tool is to identify individuals for detention, deportation and to threaten with imprisonment if they do not comply,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said.

“These actions are abhorrent to the values of this country, and we will not stand silent to see cruelty as the official immigration policy of this administration. To our community, our message is that you’re not alone, you have rights, seek legal guidance, and you’re not obligated to provide information that can hurt you or your family.”

Under Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration has sent “innocent people” to detention facilities at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, Salas said.

The administration has detained immigrants of all legal statuses without due process, and ignored court orders to reverse those actions. Advocates on the press call Tuesday said that defies the law.

Immigrants, even without legal status in the country, are “entitled to their day in immigration court,” Nicole Melaku, the executive director of National Partnership for New Americans, said.

The directive, which requires immigrants who have registered with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to always carry with them proof of their registration, would also lead to racial profiling of U.S. citizens, advocates have said.

No reported registrants

Salas said her organization, which is based in Southern California, does not know of anyone who has completed the registration.

The people who are required to register are unclear about whether it is in their interest to comply, and distrust of Trump – who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and has routinely flouted due process for immigrants – is a major obstacle.

“We don’t have anybody who has – that we know – yet registered,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion in our community as to whether to do this or not. What does it mean? What are the risks? And I also want to say that … everything that has come from this administration has actually been harmful, so people are taking that into account.”

Legal fight continuing

U.S. Judge Trevor Neil McFadden, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2017, rejected advocacy groups’ attempt to block the directive, saying in an order last week that the groups hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by it.

But the legal fight against the directive will continue, George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at the immigrant services organization CASA, said.

In addition to a possible appeal of McFadden’s ruling, Escobar said his organizations would watch “very, very closely” how the administration conducts the operation, with special attention to racial profiling, and would not hesitate to bring court challenges.

“We will do everything possible to fight this,” he said. “This may be a show-me-your-papers type of situation where people may be racially profiled, stopped on the street just because they’re speaking in other languages, because they look like an immigrant, and has to be asked to show this registration compliance.”

Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Voters cast their ballots at Fairmont Junior High in Boise during the Idaho primary on May 17, 2022. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)

The U.S. House passed a bill Thursday to require voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, approving a Republican priority over the objections of Democrats who said the bill would only create hurdles for eligible voters without actually improving fraud protection.

The 220-208 vote sent the measure to the U.S. Senate, where it faces an uphill road to overcome the chamber’s 60-vote requirement for most legislation. If enacted, the bill would require states, which are responsible for administering elections, to obtain from people registering to vote in federal elections documents that prove U.S. citizenship.

Acceptable documents under the act include any valid photo ID issued by the federal government, a state or tribe that shows the applicant’s place of birth was the United States, or a combination of a valid government-issued photo ID and another document proving citizenship such as a birth certificate or certificate of naturalization.

Four House Democrats – Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Ed Case of Hawaii and Henry Cuellar of Texas – joined all Republicans present to vote in favor of the bill.

Supporters of the bill say it is needed to keep immigrants in the country without legal status from voting.

It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, though some local governments allow noncitizen residents to vote in local elections.

GOP priority

By tackling fraudulent voting and targeting immigrants in the country illegally, the bill addresses two planks of the Republican platform under President Donald Trump. Trump has consistently positioned himself as a hardliner on immigration and continues to voice the debunked claim that fraud caused his 2020 election loss.

During floor debate this week, the bill’s sponsor, Texas Republican Chip Roy, said the measure, titled the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, responded to the message voters sent by electing Trump and Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress last year after inaction from Democratic President Joe Biden.

“Republicans are responding to an American people who are tired of the previous administration that was allowing illegals to come into our country, kill our citizens, vote in our elections, undermine our country,” Roy said. “And we are addressing their concerns and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle don’t want to address it.”

Hurdle for citizens

Democrats, though, said the measure was unnecessary to prevent the exceedingly rare cases of noncitizens voting in federal elections and would only make voting harder for citizens who are eligible, including married women who may have changed their name but have not updated their documents.

“I think the gentleman from Texas will be happy to learn that it already is the law that only American citizens can vote in federal elections,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, said following Roy’s remarks. “Our problem with the SAVE Act is that it is an attempt to make it more difficult for women in this country, women who are U.S. citizens, to be able to vote.”

At a virtual press conference Thursday, Democratic secretaries of state – the office in most states responsible for elections administration – highlighted the difficulties it could create for eligible voters.

“Losing your driver’s license or birth certificate, letting your passport expire or even getting married and taking your partner’s last name could all prevent a voter from making their voice heard in free and fair elections if the SAVE Act passes,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said. “Replacing just one of those documents – let alone multiple documents that would be needed to register – takes time and money that not every American has.

“Women who are citizens – who are eligible to vote – should not be stopped at the ballot box by (House Speaker) Mike Johnson and Donald Trump.”

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom) 

The U.S. Education Department has agreed to delay for nearly two weeks enforcement of a disputed directive seeking to ban diversity, equity and inclusion practices, according to a court filing Thursday in the case challenging the order.

The agreement between the department and the groups suing it over the order pauses enforcement until after April 24. According to the agreement, states and local education agencies until then cannot be investigated or asked to provide certification that they are not using DEI, a term for race- and gender-conscious practices, in admissions, programming, training, hiring or scholarships.

Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said the department and the groups reached the agreement Monday.

An April 3 letter from the department demanded states and districts provide certifications they were complying with the order within 10 days or risk losing federal funding. That letter followed a February missive introducing the order.

The National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union sued in New Hampshire federal court last month to block enforcement of the directive.

“This pause in enforcement provides immediate relief to schools across the country while the broader legal challenge continues,” the NEA said in a Thursday statement.

In a written statement, Biedermann said the extension was due to what the department saw as states’ efforts to comply with the order.

“The Department extended the certification requirement on Monday in response to states’ good-faith inquiries to ensure compliance,” Biedermann wrote. “Having voluntarily extended the deadline, commonsense would dictate the Department would not take enforcement action until the deadline had passed.”

Court battle

The groups asked the court to issue an emergency ruling to block enforcement of the department’s order while the case is ongoing.

The agreement effectively grants that request without a court order.

“No school district, state agency, or higher education institution will face investigation or penalties for failure to return the challenged certification that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts do not exist within their curriculums,” the NEA said.

The underlying lawsuit remains ongoing.

The suit challenges the department’s authority to impose restrictions on state K-12 curriculum and says the order limits academic freedom and restricts educators’ ability to teach.

Trump and DEI

President Donald Trump campaigned against progressive cultural positions, including how race, gender and sexuality are handled in public schools.

In the early months of his second presidency, the entire executive branch has moved to restrict DEI initiatives and education policy, which has long been a battleground for such issues, has been a focal point.

The administration has used antidiscrimination requirements to pursue restrictions on DEI initiatives in education, arguing that DEI discriminates against white students.

DEI programs “discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics in clear violation of Title VI,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting head of civil rights, said in an April 3 statement.

A Union Pacific train transports coal through Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah County, Utah. on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. President Donald Trump signed an order on April 8, 2025, aimed at boosting coal production. (Photo by Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch)

An executive order President Donald Trump signed Tuesday to block state-level renewable-energy initiatives set off alarm bells among climate advocates.

But experts and state policy groups said constitutional protections will blunt any effect the order would have on state operations.

The order, one of four Trump signed Tuesday aiming to revitalize the coal industry, directs the U.S. Justice Department to investigate and block enforcement of state laws that restrict fossil fuel production. It specifically targets state and local policies involving climate change, environmental justice and carbon emissions reductions — popular among blue states.

By attempting to strip states of their own authority to make and enforce laws, the order violates basic constitutional principles and would likely be struck down in court, environmental law experts said Wednesday.

Brad Campbell, the president of the New England-based environmental advocacy group Conservation Law Foundation, said in an interview with States Newsroom the order does not cite any federal law or interest the administration is seeking to protect — though the order does mention interstate commerce and an objective to improve national security — revealing it is more about messaging than policymaking.

“This is political theater more than it is law,” Campbell said. “It completely disregards the understanding of federalism that has been in place for centuries and the language of the Constitution itself.”

While the order itself may be unlikely to withstand legal scrutiny, it signals the administration could make demands about climate policy that would have to be obeyed at risk of losing federal cash, advocates said.

Trump officials already have shown an eagerness in their first months for using federal funding as leverage with states, universities and other institutions that are outside the federal government’s control.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Wednesday the order would protect against states assuming the power to regulate international issues like climate change.

“The President is right to ensure that Americans in both red and blue states are not beholden to State overreach stifling American energy that are unconstitutional or contradict federal law,” she said.

Climate action ‘irreconcilable’ with Trump agenda

The order includes a lengthy preamble attempting to justify federal involvement in state and local policymaking, while also noting that state policies focusing on emissions reductions and climate protections are at odds with Trump’s goals.

“These State laws and policies try to dictate interstate and international disputes over air, water, and natural resources; unduly discriminate against out-of-State businesses; contravene the equality of States; and retroactively impose arbitrary and excessive fines without legitimate justification,” the order’s opening section reads.

“These State laws and policies are fundamentally irreconcilable with my Administration’s objective to unleash American energy.  They should not stand.”

At the Tuesday signing ceremony for the order and three others on coal production, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the president that states promoting renewable sources of energy were a major part of the coal industry’s decline.

“One of the biggest problems we have in this space is Democrat states, radical leftist states, enacting policies and enacting an agenda that discriminates against coal, against secure sources of energy,” Scharf said.

The order, though, does little to change the market and technological forces that have led to the coal industry’s decline, Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the environmental group Western Environmental Law Center, said Wednesday.

“I just don’t see how the order … is going to do anything but create confusion and uncertainties for communities that are transitioning away from coal right now,” he said.

“In many respects, it does an injustice to those communities by giving them a false sense of hope that somehow coal mines and coal-fired power plants are suddenly going to be resurrected from the dead or be pushed well beyond their economic and technological lifespan.”

States undeterred

Environmental lawyers and climate advocates said the order does not change the constitutional structure of the U.S. government that empowers states to set their own laws.

Casey Katims, the executive director of the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of 24 governors seeking to prioritize state-focused climate policy, said the group’s members would not be moved by the order.

“The reality is that states continue to enjoy broad, independent constitutional authority to advance solutions to meet the needs of communities, businesses and workers,” Katims said in a Wednesday interview. “The president cannot change the Constitution by fiat.”

The group’s co-chairs, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, both Democrats, said in a Tuesday statement the administration had no power to block state authority and the coalition would be undeterred by the order.

“The federal government cannot unilaterally strip states’ independent constitutional authority,” they said. “We are a nation of states — and laws — and we will not be deterred.”

If the Justice Department, under Attorney General Pam Bondi, sues to stop enforcement of state laws, courts would likely reinforce states’ well-understood power to govern themselves, Campbell said.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative supermajority that includes three members appointed by Trump and has shown deference to even the most controversial actions of his second presidency, would move to restrain that federal power, Campbell predicted.

“I think the notion that the president can stop enforcement of state laws that don’t align with his political program will be too much of an overreach even for this very Trump-friendly Supreme Court majority,” he said.

Further, he said, even Republican governors, whose party has traditionally advocated for increased states’ rights in relation to the federal government, might object to the intrusion of the executive branch into state policymaking. Allowing action under the order would set a precedent for a future Democratic president to meddle in Republican states, he said.

Federal funding

The lack of legal authority to directly block enforcement of state laws may not keep the Trump administration from exercising power in another way: withholding federal funds from uncooperative states.

The order signals the administration, which has been bold in asserting a power to deny congressionally appropriated funding, could target states over climate policy, Schlenker-Goodrich said.

“Do they have a legal basis? Not really,” he said. “Can they use political weapons, in particular relative to funding, against states that are stepping up on climate action? That is very much a possibility. That is the direction you will see the White House going.”

A group of coal miners watch as President Donald Trump speaks at the White House shortly before signing executive orders on the coal industry on April 8, 2025. (White House livestream)

President Donald Trump signed four executive orders Tuesday aiming to invigorate the U.S. coal industry.

In wide-ranging comments in front of a phalanx of coal miners at the White House, Trump said the orders would revitalize an industry pushed to the brink by Democratic policies that encourage renewable energy.

“This is a very important day to me, because we’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned, despite the fact that it was just about the best, certainly the best in terms of power, real power,” Trump said.

The orders:

• End a moratorium on leasing federal lands for coal mining;
• Remove Biden administration environmental regulations that Trump said slow approvals of new mining projects;
• Prioritize grid security and reliability; and
• Direct the U.S. Justice Department to block states from enforcing their own regulations on coal.

Two of the orders cite increased energy demand for the power-intensive task of artificial intelligence data processing as the rationale for increasing coal production.

Reopening plans for mines in Montana, Wyoming

A press release from the Interior Department, which oversees resource management on public lands, added that one of the orders reopens plans to build mines in Montana and Wyoming, removes regulatory burdens on coal production and lowers royalty rates coal companies owe for production on federal lands.

Environmental groups cautioned against a renewed federal investment in coal and took particular exception to the provision allowing the federal government to undermine state efforts to move away from the sector.

“Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands,” Tyson Slocum, the energy policy director for the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement. “States planning to move to cleaner, cheaper energy sources could be forced to keep old coal plants up and running for years, forcing nearby residents to breathe dirty air and harming the climate.”

In a line that appeared ad-libbed, Trump also promised the orders could not be reversed by a future president.

“We’re going to give a guarantee that the business will not be terminated by the ups and downs of the world of politics,” he said. “We’re going to give a guarantee that it’s not going to happen, so that if somebody comes in, they cannot change it at a whim.”

Trump said he’d thought of the idea “about 15 minutes before” getting on stage at the White House.

‘Beautiful, clean coal’

Trump cast the move as a direct rebuke to his Democratic predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, and said it was in service of restoring working-class jobs in states like West Virginia.

“We’re ending Joe Biden’s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all. And it wasn’t just Biden, it was Obama and others, but we’re doing the exact opposite… We’re going to put the miners back to work.”

A 2024 Biden rule to raise emissions standards on coal plants was unworkable, one of the orders, which reversed the Biden rule, said.

“The Rule requires compliance with standards premised on the application of emissions-control technologies that do not yet exist in a commercially viable form,” the order said. “The Rule therefore raises the unacceptable risk of the shutdown of many coal-fired power plants, eliminating thousands of jobs, placing our electrical grid at risk, and threatening broader, harmful economic and energy security effects.”

With both U.S. senators from West Virginia, Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice, on hand, Trump said the state’s workers rejected Democrats’ vision of transitioning away from their mining identity.

“One thing I learned about the coal miners is that’s what they want to do,” he said. “You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue in a different kind of a job, but they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal. That’s what they love to do.”

Environmental groups slam orders

Even before the orders were signed, environmental advocacy groups panned them as a giveaway to the industry and a reckless move away from attention to the climate crisis.

“Trump’s coal orders take his worship of dirty fossil fuels to a gross and disturbingly reckless new level,” Jason Rylander, the legal director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, said in a written statement. “This is yet another assault on efforts to preserve a livable climate.”

Lena Moffitt, the executive director of environmental group Evergreen Action, said true energy reliability would come from renewable sources.

“Coal is toxic and outdated,” Mofitt said in a statement. “It poisons our air and water, jacks up household energy bills, and is deadly for communities living under the shadow of its smokestacks. If Trump actually cared about meeting rising energy demand, he’d invest in affordable, clean power—not drag us backward to prop up a dying industry.”

Immigration and tariffs

Trump spoke for about 45 minutes and touched on issues beyond energy policy, including his recently enacted tariffs that have rocked world financial markets and the case of a Maryland man erroneously swept up in a deportation operation.

Trump promoted his aggressive immigration policy and referenced the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a man who the administration has admitted was mistakenly deported from Maryland to his native El Salvador despite being granted legal protection to remain in the United States.

The administration sent planeloads of Venezuelan nationals to an El Salvador mega-prison last month, accusing them of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

Without naming Abrego Garcia, Trump referenced a man sent to El Salvador who was not a member of the Venezuelan gang, but said he was a member of a different Latin American gang. The government has produced no evidence to suggest Abrego Garcia is a gang member.

On tariffs, Trump said the taxes on imported goods were already bringing in billions of dollars daily in new federal revenue and were critical to protect U.S. industries.

“We’ve been ripped off and abused by countries for many years with the tariff situation,” he said. “They’ve used tariffs against us. We didn’t use tariffs against them in any way, but we just didn’t use them of any monumental proportion. And so we are doing it now.”

He did not respond to a shouted question about Republican unease with the worldwide tariffs at the close of the White House event.

The James H. Shannon Building on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by  Lydia Polimeni, National Institutes of Health)

Sixteen states with Democratic attorneys general sued the National Institutes of Health on Friday, claiming the agency has purposefully delayed and disrupted medical research grant awards and terminated grants that had already been issued.

In an 82-page complaint that names Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya as defendants, the attorneys general said since President Donald Trump retook office, NIH has delayed the review approvable process for grants that should have been awarded.

The agency has refused to pay for multi-year grants that were approved under previous administrations, citing disagreements over race and gender issues, the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts says.

Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin filed the suit.

NIH work ‘in jeopardy’

The attorneys general in those states praised the NIH as “the crown jewel” of health research that has fueled medical breakthroughs and spurred economic growth across the country.

“That critical work is now in jeopardy,” they wrote. “By law, NIH provides much of its support for scientific research and training in the form of grants to outside institutions. Since January, however, the current Administration has engaged in a concerted, and multi-pronged effort to disrupt NIH’s grants.”

Starting last month, NIH sent “hundreds of letters” to research institutions in the states canceling grants that had already been issued. The institutions were told the grants “no longer effectuate… agency priorities,” according to the complaint.

Those cancellations stem from three executive orders Trump signed on his first day back in office targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and recognition of transgender people. Agency leaders followed up with directives to pause related grants.

The letters to research institutions declare “the grant in question has been terminated because of some connection to ‘DEI,’ ‘transgender issues,’ “vaccine hesitancy,” or another topic disfavored by the current Administration,” the attorneys general wrote.

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Yet another legal battle

The department is also facing a suit from a wider group of Democratic states over the cancellation of other grants that were initially issued during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those states say the department overrode extensions of the grants and rescinded $11 billion in funding that has led to layoffs and work stoppages.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered those grants to be temporarily restored as the case unfolds.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. departs after testifying in a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

A federal judge in Rhode Island will grant a request from Democratic state officials to temporarily prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from cutting state health grants, the judge said at a Thursday afternoon hearing.

U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy said the 24 Democratic attorneys general and governors were likely to prevail on the merits of their case seeking to restore funding that the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services abruptly rescinded late last month.

““I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order. The balance of the equities are to maintaining the funding as it is,” McElroy said after brief arguments from attorneys representing a consortium of state governments and HHS. “The harm to the plaintiff states and the plaintiff agencies if we cease that … is clearly irreparable.”

HHS, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., revoked $11 billion in grant funding to states beginning on March 24, the states wrote in a Tuesday filing requesting the court block the move.

McElroy indicated at least part of her decision was based on the broadness of the Trump administration’s argument.

The administration was hampered from fighting the case after receiving the states’ motion for a temporary restraining order and “4,000 pages of exhibits” mere days ago, Leslie Kane, who represented HHS, said.

“Given the time limitation … it really significantly limits any substantive argument I can make at this time,” Kane said. She still offered a general objection to the “extraordinary emergency relief” she said the states were seeking.

But McElroy, whom Trump appointed during his first presidency, ruled that the “voluminous” record provided by the states weighed in favor of granting the order.

“Given that the government really hasn’t had time to make any kind of objection except a broad objection, I don’t see how I can deny the temporary restraining order on the record that’s before the court, which, again: quite voluminous,” McElroy said.

States scrambling

The rescissions of grant funding in late March from COVID-19-era laws surprised state health departments and led to rapid layoffs and pauses in contract work while states scrambled to understand what other cuts they would need to make.

Sarah Rice, an assistant attorney general in Rhode Island who argued for the Democratic states, listed several effects already or soon to be felt by the states.

In Minnesota, 170 employees had already been laid off, with hundreds more at risk of job loss. Rhode Island employees with extensive training on vaccine storage might be laid off. Subcontractors in Wisconsin were told to pause their work, and Washington state may be unable to move substance abuse and mental health patients from a “high-acuity” treatment setting to community treatment, Rice said.

“These are just exemplars from the very many declarations that the state employees put together,” she said.

States had no advance warning their funding would be pulled, and were especially shocked by the reversal of funding because HHS had told them how to continue to use COVID-19 funding, Rice said.

“This was quite a surprising turn because HHS had prior issued guidance that instructed the states how to modify these programs to comply with the appropriations statutes after the public health emergency related to COVID-19 had ended,” Rice said.

The department had even granted states extensions for various grants as late as June 2027, Rice added.

The attorneys general of Colorado, Rhode Island, California, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania brought the case.

A NOAA NO-XP radar antenna prior to operations in VORTEX 2 in Norman, Oklahoma, on Oct. 5, 2010.  (Photo credit NOAA)

Democrats on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee and a panel of experts on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration’s reduction to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget and workforce, citing consequences for everyday weather data, national security and affected industries.

Virtually every American interacts with NOAA’s weather data, which supplies forecasting services across the country.

The agency’s climate and oceanic research supports the U.S. Navy’s operations and even the commercial fishing industry – described during the forum as having “a love-hate relationship” with the agency – depends on NOAA to open and close fisheries, the lawmakers and experts said.

But those missions were imperiled in February by the firings of 7% of NOAA’s staff of scientists and others overseeing federal research and monitoring of weather and oceans, the group of Democrats said.

“These critical functions are being dismantled by the sweeping, indiscriminate layoffs of nonpartisan public servants and facility closures,” U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat who led the forum, said.

The reductions in force at NOAA, which houses agencies including the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, were part of across-the-board cuts to the federal workforce sought by President Donald Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.

The group of Democrats, who met without involvement of the committee’s Republican majority, said the cuts would hurt a wide range of Americans who depend on the agency’s data collection and rulemaking.

Data collection and dissemination

One of NOAA’s core missions is collecting and publishing weather data across the country used in forecasting apps and other common sources of weather information.

“There is no weather forecast that’s produced in this country that isn’t dependent on NOAA, none” Mary Glackin, a former deputy under secretary for operations at the agency under presidents of both parties, said.

The availability of federal data made possible the creation of companies like Accuweather, which started by collecting data in a garage, Glackin said.

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Jon White told the panel NOAA’s extensive forecasting data was also critical to naval operations, saying reductions in that data would hurt the military’s readiness, both shipping out of domestic stations and in potential conflict zones.

“Hurricane forecasting and typhoon forecasting rely on the data from NOAA, whether it’s satellite data,” White said. “Reductions in that data and that information provide critical threats to our military infrastructure. Ships that (start) out of Norfolk and San Diego rely on that information about upcoming storms, especially hurricanes on the East Coast. … It’s not just billions of dollars of ship damage: It’s lives that are at stake.”

Industry needs NOAA

Magaziner was the one who called the commercial fishing industry’s connection with NOAA “a love-hate relationship,” but he and witnesses noted that the agency oversees the most basic functions the industry needs to operate.

Sarah Schumann, a fisherman with operations in Rhode Island and Alaska, criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for allying too strongly with offshore wind developers, but said the new administration’s actions were also detrimental to the industry.

“These cuts will bog down the agency’s ability to serve the public for fishermen,” Schumann said. “Because of climate change, we desperately need faster, more nimble and more collaborative data collection and decision-making, and there is a very slim chance we’re going to get that with this.”

Trump’s slowdown of regulations – requiring federal agencies to withdraw 10 regulations for every one new regulation put into place – has also hampered commercial fishing operations.

Opening and closing fisheries for a season are done through NOAA rulemaking, environmental attorney Lizzie Lewis told the panel. Bluefin tuna fisheries were not closed on time and were overfished by 125% and fisheries in New England are unlikely to open on time, she said.

Efficiency?

The cuts, part of Musk’s initiative to make government more efficient, are not having their intended effect in streamlining government, Magaziner and others on the panel, including New Mexico’s Melanie Stansbury, said.

“The assertion that mass layoffs will somehow improve efficiency is not only misleading, it is outright dangerous,” Magaziner said. “Real people, real jobs and real lives are on the line. Without NOAA’s real-time data,  emergency responders are left without the critical information they need to respond to impending disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, floods and severe storms putting millions at risk.”

The layoffs also decimated morale at the agency and made attracting qualified young people to its public service mission more difficult, Lewis told the panel.

“We are losing an entire generation of scientists and leaders who can help this country,” Lewis said. “We can keep its people safe and can grow its economy. And that to me is the devastating human cost.”

People demonstrate outside the main campus of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention on April 1, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off thousands of employees across multiple agencies on April 1, as part of an overhaul announced in March. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)

A coalition of Democratic state officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday over plans to cut more than $11 billion in grants by the Department of Health and Human Services, on the same day thousands of HHS workers reportedly found they’d been swept up in a mass layoff.

In Washington, the Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking him to appear before the panel and discuss his plans for the massive agency.

The federal suit, signed by 22 attorneys general and two Democratic governors, alleges Kennedy revoked, without warning, billions in grant funding appropriated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, starting last week. That led to states scrambling to adjust plans for vaccination efforts, infectious disease prevention, mental health programs and more.

The sudden and chaotic rollout of the grant cuts foreshadowed a scene at HHS offices, including at big campuses in Maryland, on Tuesday morning. Termination notices to laid-off workers were reportedly emailed early Tuesday, but many workers did not see them before arriving at the office and finding out they’d lost their jobs when their key cards did not work.

Few specifics

Both the mass layoffs and the grant funding cuts challenged in the lawsuit stem from Kennedy’s March 27 announcement that the department would be “realigning,” by shuttering several offices and cutting 10,000 workers.

It was unclear Tuesday exactly what offices or employees were affected.

An HHS spokesperson responded to a request for comment by referring States Newsroom to Kennedy’s announcement, a press release and an accompanying fact sheet from March 27.

None provided a detailed breakdown but laid out plans to eliminate 3,500 full-time positions at the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,200 staff at the National Institutes of Health and 300 workers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up inquiry requesting more details of the positions eliminated and other clarifications.

Efficiency doubted

In a written statement, Andrés Arguello, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collective, a think tank focused on economic equity, said the cuts would have “the exact opposite” effect of the administration’s stated goal of government efficiency.

“Gutting 10,000 public servants means higher costs, longer wait times, and fewer services for families already struggling with the rising cost of living,” Arguello, an HHS deputy secretary under former President Joe Biden, wrote. “Entire offices that support child care, energy assistance, and mental health treatment are being dismantled, leaving working families with fewer options and bigger bills. This isn’t streamlining—it’s abandonment, and the price will be paid by the sick, the vulnerable, and the poor.”

The lack of communication led to confusion among advocates and state and local health workers about the impacts of the staff cuts and cast doubt about the administration’s goals, speakers on a Tuesday press call said.

“There are so many more questions than answers right now,” Sharon Gilmartin, the executive director of Safe States Alliance, an anti-violence advocacy group, said. “They clearly are eliminating whole divisions and branches, which doesn’t speak to bureaucratic streamlining. It speaks to moving forward an agenda, which has not been elucidated for the public health community, it’s not been elucidated for the public.”

While specific consequences of the cuts were not yet known, Gilmartin and others said they would be felt at the state and local level.

“I think what we do know is that … when we’re cutting these positions at the federal level, we are cutting work in states and communities,” Gilmartin said.

Pain in the states

The lawsuit from Democratic officials is full of details about the impacts of the loss of federal funding on state programs.

The suit was brought in Rhode Island federal court by the attorneys general of Colorado, Rhode Island, California, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

HHS revoked “more than half a billion dollars” of grants from Pennsylvania, the Democratic officials said, affecting more than 150 state employees and contracted staff. The grants funded work “to respond to and mitigate the spread of infectious disease across the Commonwealth” and mental health and substance abuse programs.

In Nevada, “HHS abruptly terminated at least six grants” that had funded epidemiology and lab capacity, immunization access and mental health services, according to the suit.

“These terminations led Nevada to immediately terminate 48 state employees and to order contractors working under these awards to immediately cease all activity,” the complaint reads. “The loss of funding will have substantial impacts on public health in Nevada.”

The cutoff of $13 million in unobligated grants for local communities in Minnesota will mean the shuttering of clinics to provide vaccines for COVID-19, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza and other diseases, the suit said.

“One local public health agency reported that it held 21 childhood vaccination clinics and provided approximately 1,400 vaccinations to children in 2024,” a paragraph in the complaint about Minnesota local vaccine clinics said. “It also held 87 general vaccination clinics in 2024. As a result of the termination of the … funds, it has immediately ceased all vaccination clinics for 2025.”

The grant terminations also affected state plans already in the works.

Rhode Island had received an extension from HHS for a grant with $13 million unspent, but that money was revoked last week.

“Accordingly, the state public health department developed a workplan for its immunization program that included an April 2025 vaccination clinic for seniors, provided salaries for highly trained technicians to ensure that vaccine doses are stored and refrigerated correctly to prevent waste of vaccines purchased with other tax-payer dollars, planned computer system upgrades, and covered printing costs for communications about vaccine campaigns,” the suit said.

Senators want RFK Jr. on the Hill

Democrats on Capitol Hill issued a slew of statements opposing the cuts and warning of their effects.

Republicans were more deferential to the administration, asking for patience as details of the cuts are revealed.

But the letter from the top members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also brought both sides together to write Kennedy asking him to testify before the committee to make those explanations plain.

“The hearing will discuss your proposed reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services,” the letter from Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders said.

In a written statement, Cassidy said the hearing would be an opportunity for Kennedy to inform the public about the reorganization.

“The news coverage on the HHS reorg is being set by anonymous sources and opponents are setting the perceptions,” Cassidy said in a written statement. “In the confirmation process, RFK committed to coming before the committee on a quarterly basis. This will be a good opportunity for him to set the record straight and speak to the goals, structure and benefits of the proposed reorganization.”

Emergency response units search the crash site of the American Airlines plane on the Potomac River after the plane crashed on approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

The U.S. Army and Federal Aviation Administration continued to allow some flights to operate near a Washington, D.C.-area airport with a location communications system turned off, even after the absence of that system contributed to the January midair collision that killed 67 people, officials testified at a U.S. Senate panel hearing Thursday.

Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Aviation, Space and Innovation Subcommittee that he was ordering all flights in the airspace of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport operate with a certain aircraft tracking system.

But until Thursday, no such order was in place, Rocheleau said, to the dismay of some leading committee members.

The system, known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, or ADS-B, automatically broadcasts once per second an aircraft’s location to other nearby pilots. The system from broadcasting outgoing signals is called ADS-B out, and the ability to receive the signals is called ADS-B in.

The U.S. Army continues to allow flights with ADS-B turned off, even in the area around the Virginia-based airport that serves the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, also known as DCA, U.S. Army Brigadier Gen. Matthew Braman, the director of Army aviation, told the panel.

“I have to say I find that shocking and deeply unacceptable,” Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who chairs the full committee, told Braman.

“And I want to encourage the Army right now to revisit that policy and revisit that policy today,” Cruz continued. “If the Army chooses not to, I have a high level of confidence that Congress will pass legislation mandating that you revisit the policy. If today another accident occurs over DCA with another helicopter that had ADS-B out turned off, the Army will have very direct responsibility, and I am at a loss to come up with any justification for risking the lives of the traveling public with that decision.”

Rocheleau said he was putting in place a requirement Thursday to require all flights near DCA, including military flights, to have ADS-B turned on.

ADS-B is considered much more accurate than traditional radar, which broadcasts once every four to six seconds, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said.

The full committee’s ranking Democrat, Maria Cantwell of Washington, appeared not to know in advance Rocheleau was planning to issue the requirement and questioned his handling of the issue.

“Acting administrator, you’re not building faith in this system of oversight of the FAA,” she said.

She noted several government agencies and departments, including the Department of Homeland Security, had applied for exemptions to be allowed to keep their safety systems off.

Rocheleau said the FAA had a memorandum of understanding with other federal airspace users that they must use the safety system, though Cantwell noted that was not legally enforceable.

‘Intolerable risk’

Several factors contributed to the deadly Jan. 29 collision of an Army Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines commercial jet over the Potomac River, Homendy said. Sixty-four people on the regional jet died, along with three in the Black Hawk.

But the helicopter’s approved flight path that left no margin for error presented an “intolerable risk to aviation safety,” she said.

Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said the FAA ignored warning signs for years.

Over a 13-year span, there was not a single month that did not include a “close call” between a helicopter and a commercial jet operating at DCA, Moran said.

He added that in just more than three years, from October 2021 to December 2024, there were 15,000 “close proximity events” between a helicopter and a commercial jet.

“I want to know how, with these statistics in the FAA files, why, prior to Jan. 29 the agency failed to improve safety protocols at Reagan National Airport,” he said.

The American Airlines flight attempting to land at DCA departed from Wichita, Kansas, and Moran opened the hearing with an acknowledgment of the lives lost.

“Sixty-seven lives that were lost on Jan. 29 were taken prematurely in an accident that, by all indications, should have been avoided,” he said.

The collision was the first disaster of President Donald Trump’s second term and came just two days after the Senate confirmed former Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy as Transportation secretary.

It was the deadliest plane crash in the Washington area since 1982, when an Air Florida flight crashed into the Potomac River and killed 78 people.

Transparency

Homendy also told the panel her agency had trouble procuring records and even basic information from an FAA-led working group on helicopter safety in the D.C. area.

The Army is also a member of that working group, Braman said.

“Can I please say there is a D.C. helicopter working group that we have been trying to figure out who is part of the working group and get minutes and get documents from that working group to see what information was shared and what was discussed over the years, and we have not been able to attain that yet,” Homendy said.

She added she wanted to review how the flight plan was approved.

Rocheleau said he would work to figure out why the NTSB has had issues with the records.

In a statement, the law firm representing some families of those killed in the crash, called for more transparency from the agencies involved.

Rocheleau and Braman “were less than forthcoming to the American public and did their best to obfuscate the information provided to the committee,” the statement from Clifford Law Offices read. “They failed to accept responsibility and accountability for this needless tragedy and the thousands of other adverse experiences that could have led to additional disasters.”

President Donald Trump speaks at the Justice Department on March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to impose a 25% tariff on imported cars and light trucks.

Trump, who campaigned on bringing down consumer costs, said during an Oval Office signing event the additional tax on foreign goods would spur U.S. production.

Asked if, like other tariffs Trump’s threatened, trade partners could do anything to avoid the fee on cars and trucks, Trump answered no. This tariff will remain in place until he leaves office, he said, and was meant to protect the U.S. industry.

“I think our automobile business will flourish like it’s never flourished before,” he said.

The tariff will go into effect April 2, he said. It will add to – not replace – any other applicable existing tariffs, he said.

“We’re going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things they’ve been taking over the years,” he said. “They’ve taken so much out of our country, friend and foe alike. And frankly, friend has been oftentimes much worse than foe.”

The measure could bring in $100 billion in tax revenue, a White House aide said during the Oval Office event.

Trump said the administration would have “very strong policing” to enforce the tariffs.

Trump said he did not seek advice from White House adviser Elon Musk, the CEO of U.S. electric carmaker Tesla, because “he might have a conflict.”

Trump said the tariffs may be good or neutral for Tesla, which he noted had large plants in Texas and California.

“Anybody that has plants in the United States it’s going to be good for,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., points to text messages by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during an annual worldwide threats assessment hearing at the Longworth House Office Building on March 26, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The hearing held by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence addressed top aides inadvertently including Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic magazine, on a high level Trump administration Signal group chat discussing plans to bomb Houthi targets in Yemen. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The now-famous group chat made up of high-ranking Trump administration national security officials and a journalist included a precise timeline of U.S. bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen, and revealed one of the targets of the attack was under surveillance, according to a release of the entire text chain The Atlantic published Wednesday.

Despite the newly revealed details of the leaked chat, administration officials, including President Donald Trump himself, continued to downplay the seriousness of the breach, and Republicans in Congress refused to join Democrats in calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to step down.

Administration officials argued the texts lacked key information and that the “attack plans” revealed in the chat were less damaging than “war plans,” the term Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg used to refer to information he’d decided to withhold for national security reasons. Trump aides also implied the magazine – which has endorsed Trump’s opponent in each of his elections – was spinning the entire episode to discredit the administration.

What’s been dubbed “Signalgate” began when The Atlantic on Monday published a stunning account by  Goldberg of his apparently accidental inclusion in a group chat on the messaging app Signal, titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”

The others in the chat were senior administration officials discussing the upcoming war operation.

Administration leaders on Tuesday denied, including in testimony before Congress, that the chat contained classified information. The magazine then published a report Wednesday by Goldberg and staff writer Shane Harris that purported to include virtually the entire transcript of the chat until Goldberg’s voluntary exit.

The administration position was inconsistent with the screenshots published in The Atlantic of detailed and explicit messages in the chat. At the Capitol, concerns were raised even among the administration’s usually obsequious GOP allies in Congress, with U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker saying the information in the chat should have been classified.

“The information as published recently appears to me to be of such a sensitive nature that, based on my knowledge, I would have wanted to classify it,” Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, told reporters on the Hill Wednesday.

Attack details revealed

In the initial story, Goldberg reported National Security Advisor Michael Waltz on March 11 added the journalist to a group chat on Signal that included Vice President J.D. Vance, Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Waltz and others.

Goldberg in the first story withheld details of the chat that he said could have compromised intelligence-gathering and military operations.

But after a day of administration figures claiming the Signal chat did not reveal classified material, while smearing Goldberg, the magazine published the entire thread with one redaction: the name of Ratcliffe’s chief of staff, at the request of a CIA spokesperson.

The unredacted messages show Hegseth shared plans of the bombing campaign about 30 minutes before the first planes took off on March 15 and two hours before the start of the window of opportunity for hitting a target.

“TEAM UPDATE,” Hegseth wrote in the chat on the day of the strike, according to the Atlantic’s Wednesday story. “TIME NOW (1144et): Weather is FAVORABLE. Just CONFIRMED w/CENTCOM we are a GO for mission launch.”

In the same message, Hegseth laid out a timeline of the attack, including confirmation that a target was at his expected location.

“Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME,” Hegseth wrote.

He also noted that the mission’s operational security was “clean.”

Two hours and 15 minutes later, Waltz told the group that bombs had destroyed a building where the Houthi “top missile guy” was thought to be present.

“The first target – their top missile guy – we had positive ID of him walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed,” Waltz wrote.

Tuesday denials led to publishing

At a previously scheduled U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, Gabbard said that no classified information was discussed in the chat.

Trump echoed that message and Hegseth said, “Nobody was texting war plans and that’s all I have to say about that.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on social media:

“Here are the facts about his latest story: 1. No ‘war plans’ were discussed. 2. No classified material was sent to the thread. 3. The White House Counsel’s Office has provided guidance on a number of different platforms for President Trump’s top officials to communicate as safely and efficiently as possible.”

Gabbard and Ratcliffe told the Senate Intelligence Committee they did not recall specific weapons systems or the timing of the operation being discussed in the chat.

But the transcript published by The Atlantic showed Hegseth’s down-to-the-minute timeline of the launch of F-18 aircraft.

The denials led to the magazine’s decision to publish the full transcript Wednesday, Goldberg and Harris wrote.

“The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump — combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts — have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions,” they wrote.

“There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”

‘No names. No targets.’

But Hegseth and other administration officials continued to deny the growing controversy was serious Wednesday.

“So, let’s (sic) me get this straight,” Hegseth wrote on X Wednesday. “The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.

“Those are some really shitty war plans.”

Waltz posted a similar message.

“No locations,” he wrote. “No sources & methods. NO WAR PLANS. Foreign partners had already been notified that strikes were imminent. BOTTOM LINE:  President Trump is protecting America and our interests.”

White House Counselor Alina Habba told reporters shortly after the second Atlantic story posted on Wednesday morning the issue had been overblown.

“We stand by Mike Waltz; he’s doing a tremendous job,” she said, according to a White House pool report. “I think this is a distraction.”

Bipartisan call for investigation

Leading members of Congress, though, were treating the matter with more seriousness.

Wicker said he and Armed Services ranking Democrat Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island had agreed on next steps, which included a letter to the administration asking for an expedited inspector general report on the matter.

He also said they were requesting “a senior person” come to a secure facility on Capitol Hill to provide a classified briefing to the committee to confirm the reporting was accurate.

Asked what the consequence should be for Hegseth if the transcript of the chat was accurate, Wicker took a forgiving tone.

“I make a lot of mistakes in my life,” he said. “And I’ve found that it’s best when I just own up to it and say ‘I’m human, I made a mistake.’ And I’m glad in this case no real damage was done. I think that’s probably the approach of the administration right up to the president.”

He also said that no targets or specific timing were mentioned.

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate who has voiced criticism of Trump more often than most GOP colleagues, wrote in an X post Wednesday that the incident should be a “wake-up call” to prioritize operational security.

“I am appalled by the egregious security breach from top administration officials,” she wrote. “Their disregard for stringent safeguards and secure channels could have compromised a high-stakes operation and put our servicemembers at risk. I hope this serves as a wake-up call that operational security must be a top priority for everyone—especially our leaders.”

Dems urge Hegseth’s resignation

Many Democrats went further, calling for Hegseth to resign over the use of an unclassified messaging platform to discuss impending military action.

Gabbard and others noted the Defense secretary can decide what information is classified to argue that the chat did not include classified information.

But critics said whether or not the information was technically classified, its disclosure would put service members at greater risk.

“Advance strike times are sensitive and classified because they put American military directly at risk,” Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, wrote on social media Wednesday. “The Secretary of Defense was blasting them out to unknown numbers over unclassified channels. It’s sloppy, careless, and dangerous. He should resign.”

Warner spokeswoman Rachel Cohen added that, despite the administration’s denials, the information revealed in The Atlantic would compromise intelligence sources and methods.

“They can keep repeating this but it’s not true,” she wrote, responding to Hegseth’s post. “Those messages, as released by the Atlantic, are source revealing, and include targeting and weapons information that would have, at the very least, been considered at the ‘secret’ classification level.”

The top Democrats in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both of New York, also called for Hegseth to lose his job.

“The secretary of Defense should be fired immediately if he’s not man enough to own up to his mistakes and resign in disgrace,” Jeffries said on MSNBC Wednesday.

“I agree he should be fired,” Schumer told reporters at the Capitol.

People bag sand in preparation for possible flooding as Tropical Storm Helene, which later became Hurricane Helene, headed toward the state's Gulf Coast on Sept. 25, 2024, in Tallahassee, Florida.  (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

A bipartisan pair of Florida U.S. House members introduced a bill Monday to remove the Federal Emergency Management Agency from the Department of Homeland Security and elevate it to an independent Cabinet-level agency.

Democrat Jared Moskowitz and Republican Byron Donalds filed the bill Monday, with Moskowitz saying divorcing FEMA from the bureaucracy at DHS would lead to better outcomes for disaster preparedness and response.

The agency’s mission requires haste, but its workers are too often bogged down in unrelated DHS work, Moskowitz said.

“By removing FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and restoring its status as an independent, Cabinet-level agency, my bipartisan bill will help cut red tape, improve government efficiency, and save lives,” he said in a Monday statement. “It will also help refocus FEMA on its original mission: as an agency tasked with responding before, during, and after disaster events.”

In a statement issued by Moskowitz’s office, Donalds added DHS had become “overly bureaucratic” and “overly political.”

“When disaster strikes, quick and effective action must be the standard––not the exception,” Donalds said. “It is imperative that FEMA is removed from the bureaucratic labyrinth of DHS and instead is designated to report directly to the President of the United States.”

Law creating agency

FEMA, which coordinates federal disaster relief efforts, was moved to DHS at that department’s 2003 inception after President Jimmy Carter signed the law creating FEMA in 1979.

President Bill Clinton made FEMA a Cabinet-level agency, but President George W. Bush did not renew that status.

Moskowitz, a former state emergency management director under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been a consistent advocate for funding FEMA while also calling for reforms to the agency.

FEMA is a frequent object of criticism from lawmakers of both parties and has often been targeted for overhaul.

Moskowitz, who led a similar bill last year, has argued making the agency independent of contentious issues like immigration, which DHS is primarily responsible for, would free it to better focus on its core mission.

“For an agency that needs to be fast, it can’t function in an agency of 22 others,” Moskowitz said at a March 4 hearing. “They shouldn’t be involved in immigration, but why are they? Because Homeland is using FEMA to run every grant of every agency … within Homeland. Half of FEMA’s personnel now are running grants.”

He has pitched the issue as nonpartisan, saying at the hearing that both red and blue states are subject to natural disasters and need aid from the federal government.

The endorsement of Donalds, a loyal backer of President Donald Trump and the Trump-endorsed candidate to succeed DeSantis as governor in the 2026 election, appears designed to win support from across the House’s vast ideological spectrum.

At odds with DOGE?

Trump, though, may be more inclined to undercut the agency than to promote it.

Since retaking office in January, Trump and influential adviser Elon Musk have aggressively sought to reduce the federal bureaucracy, slashing staff, eliminating directives and – in the case of the Education Department – moving to close an entire department.

The government-wide staff cuts have hit FEMA, which fired 200 workers last month.

Moskowitz became the first Democrat to join the Congressional Department of Government Efficiency Caucus in December, aligning himself with Musk’s mission to make government more efficient. In his announcement, he cited DHS’s hosting of FEMA as an example of an overextended bureaucracy.

For education, Trump said shuttering the federal department would allow states to be more active in policymaking.

Last week, he made a similar move involving FEMA, signing an executive order to enhance the state and local government roles in disaster preparedness.

The order calls for an administration official to recommend “revisions, recissions, and replacements necessary to reformulate the process and metrics for Federal responsibility.”

President Donald Trump spoke Thursday, March 20, 2025, to a crypto industry conference. (Photo illustration by Namthip Muanthongthae / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signaled his continued support for cryptocurrency, saying at an industry conference Thursday morning he wanted to see the United States lead the world in digital asset technology.

In a brief recorded video broadcast to the Digital Assets Summit in New York, Trump, who launched his own meme coin in January that held an overall market value of $2.3 billion Thursday, noted some steps his administration has taken to encourage crypto. He positioned himself as a leading advocate for the technology but was vague about future policy proposals.

“It’s an honor to speak with you about how the United States is going to dominate crypto and the next generation of financial technologies,” he said. “And it’s not going to be easy, but we’re way ahead.”

Trump noted he held the first ever White House digital assets summit this month, appointed a White House artificial intelligence and crypto czar and created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.

The reserves would allow the government to retain the value of digital currencies, he said, adding that was impossible under his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Reversing policy

Trump said his administration would seek to loosen regulations, in a reversal from Biden policy.

“We’re ending the last administration’s regulatory war on crypto and bitcoin,” he said. “Frankly, it was a disgrace. But as of Jan. 20, 2025, all of that is over.”

He also said he’d asked Congress to create “simple, commonsense rules for stable coins and market structure.”

Despite looser regulations, the framework would lead to “greater privacy, safety, security and wealth for American consumers and businesses alike,” he said, calling the decentralized finance system “one of the most exciting technological revolutions in modern history.”

Trump’s ties to industry

The decentralized nature of cryptocurrency allows anyone to launch a currency, which has led to a series of so-called meme coins fronted by celebrities or tied to internet trends that form a particularly volatile segment of the crypto market.

Trump has a vested interest in the success of the crypto market, with a reported 80% stake in his own token.

Trump’s coin peaked at a value of $14.5 billion the day before his inauguration but has since lost nearly 85% of its value. The financial news service Reuters reported last month that firms generated nearly $100 million in trading fees associated with the Trump coin, even as its market value plummeted.