"What's Past is Prologue..."
“I
don’t believe there is any problem of American politics and American
public life which is more significant today than the pervasive civic
ignorance of the Constitution of the United States and the structure of
government....an ignorant people can never remain a free people.
Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.…“What I worry about is
that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is
responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for
example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with
another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say,
‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’ That is how the
Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor not because he arrested the
Roman senate. He became emperor because he promised he would solve
problems that were not being solved. “If we know who is responsible, I
have enough faith in the American people to demand performance from
those responsible. If we don’t know, we will stay away from the polls.
We will not demand it. And the day will come when somebody will come
forward and we and the government will in effect say, ‘take the ball and
run with it. Do what you have to do.’ That is the way democracy dies.
And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge,
that is what you should worry about at night.”
–Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, September 14, 2012
Trump Officials Proceed With Mass Job Cuts Across Multiple Federal Agencies
February 14, 2025
New York Times
President Donald Trump signing executive orders and answering questions in the Oval Office on Thursday. Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
February 14, 2025
New York Times
President Donald Trump signing executive orders and answering questions in the Oval Office on Thursday. Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
Where Things Stand
Layoffs escalate: Job cuts cascaded through the federal government on Thursday after its human resources division advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 workers on probation, a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s drive to overhaul and shrink the federal work force. The Department of Veterans Affairs alone dismissed more than 1,000 employees, including probationary workers who had worked at the agency for less than two years. Read more ›
Modi visit: President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India held a news conference after a private meeting, and Mr. Trump said the United States this year would increase military sales to India by “many billions” of dollars. Mr. Modi said India and the United States will launch a framework for defense cooperation for the next decade and added the two countries would also collaborate to develop semiconductors, quantum technology and artificial intelligence. Read more ›
More tariffs: Mr. Trump ordered his advisers to calculate broad new tariffs on U.S. trading partners around the globe, an ambitious task that will shatter the rules of the global trading system and most likely set off furious negotiations. The order covers tariffs other countries place on goods from the United States as well as other taxes, subsidies given to their own industries and other behaviors Mr. Trump deems unfair. The president, speaking with Mr. Modi, said he had discussions with India in his first term about tariffs being too high and that now his reciprocal tariff rates are the right approach. Read more ›
Kennedy confirmed: The Senate voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly expressed skepticism of vaccines, as the health and human services secretary. Mr. Kennedy later told Fox News that Mr. Trump had asked him to study the safety of abortion pills. The Senate also confirmed Brooke Rollins as agriculture secretary in a bipartisan 72-28 vote and advanced Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the F.B.I.
Pinned
Madeleine NgoChris CameronNicholas Nehamas and Mattathias Schwartz
Reporting from Washington
Layoffs escalate: Job cuts cascaded through the federal government on Thursday after its human resources division advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 workers on probation, a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s drive to overhaul and shrink the federal work force. The Department of Veterans Affairs alone dismissed more than 1,000 employees, including probationary workers who had worked at the agency for less than two years. Read more ›
Modi visit: President Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India held a news conference after a private meeting, and Mr. Trump said the United States this year would increase military sales to India by “many billions” of dollars. Mr. Modi said India and the United States will launch a framework for defense cooperation for the next decade and added the two countries would also collaborate to develop semiconductors, quantum technology and artificial intelligence. Read more ›
More tariffs: Mr. Trump ordered his advisers to calculate broad new tariffs on U.S. trading partners around the globe, an ambitious task that will shatter the rules of the global trading system and most likely set off furious negotiations. The order covers tariffs other countries place on goods from the United States as well as other taxes, subsidies given to their own industries and other behaviors Mr. Trump deems unfair. The president, speaking with Mr. Modi, said he had discussions with India in his first term about tariffs being too high and that now his reciprocal tariff rates are the right approach. Read more ›
Kennedy confirmed: The Senate voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly expressed skepticism of vaccines, as the health and human services secretary. Mr. Kennedy later told Fox News that Mr. Trump had asked him to study the safety of abortion pills. The Senate also confirmed Brooke Rollins as agriculture secretary in a bipartisan 72-28 vote and advanced Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the F.B.I.
Pinned
Madeleine NgoChris CameronNicholas Nehamas and Mattathias Schwartz
Reporting from Washington
The Trump administration is escalating layoffs, targeting most of an estimated 200,000 workers on probation.
The Office of Personnel Management in Washington last week. Credit: Valerie Plesch for The New York Times
Layoffs cascaded through the federal government on Thursday after its human resources division advised agencies to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 workers on probation, a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s drive to overhaul and shrink the federal work force.
Among the largest layoffs reported on Thursday was one announced by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which dismissed more than 1,000 employees, including probationary workers who had worked at the agency for less than two years. Employees at several other agencies also reported receiving termination notices, though the full extent of the cuts in many departments was not immediately clear.
Regardless, the layoffs could mark a major increase in the scale of the Trump administration’s efforts to shed federal workers and reshape government. The administration had already said that about 75,000 workers had accepted an offer to resign in exchange for being paid through September, but the removal of most workers on probation, generally recent hires who have been in their roles less than a year, could cut much deeper into the federal government’s civilian work force of 2.3 million.
The cuts even extended to the agency ordering them, the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal civilian work force. It laid off dozens of employees on Thursday, according to people familiar with the move.
The dismissals came on the same day that leaders at O.P.M. met with agency representatives and urged them to lay off most probationary employees, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak about the issue publicly.
Many employees on fixed-term assignments at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were also terminated on Thursday, according to several people familiar with the matter. The dismissals came after more than 70 probationary workers at the bureau were laid off earlier this week.
Workers on probation do not receive the same protections that many other federal employees have. Probationary periods tend to last a year, but they can be longer for certain positions. According to the most recent data as of May, the federal government employed roughly 220,000 employees who were serving in their roles for less than a year.
A spokesperson for the Office of Personnel Management said the probationary period was “not an entitlement for permanent employment,” and that agencies were taking independent action in support of President Trump’s broader efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
The terminations were swiftly condemned by union leaders representing federal workers.
“These firings are not about poor performance — there is no evidence these employees were anything but dedicated public servants,” Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement. “They are about gutting the federal government, silencing workers, and forcing agencies into submission to a radical agenda that prioritizes cronyism over competence.”
The exact number of workers who were fired at the Office of Personnel Management was unclear, but three people at the agency familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said that those affected included probationary employees who had worked there for less than two years, members of the agency’s communications office and Schedule A workers — individuals, including veterans, with severe physical, psychiatric or intellectual disabilities.
The affected O.P.M. employees were locked out of their computer systems and asked to leave the building less than an hour after they were informed of the layoffs in a group call, according to audio of the call, which was shared with The New York Times. An email to staff, also shared with The Times, said that the agency’s communications office was being dissolved as part of wider cuts at the Office of Personnel Management.
The firings came a day after the Trump administration moved forward with a deferred resignation program for federal workers, which encouraged employees to resign in exchange for being paid through September, though Congress has not approved funding for it yet. The incentive program has closed to new entries after a judge allowed it to proceed.
Officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs said that workers who accepted the resignation offer were exempt from the terminations on Thursday. There are currently more than 43,000 probationary employees across the department, and the vast majority were exempt from the terminations because they serve in “mission-critical positions" or are covered under a collective bargaining agreement, according to department officials.
The dismissals came after other agencies had already moved to lay off workers in recent days. On Wednesday, the General Services Administration — which manages the federal real estate portfolio and much of the government’s tech work force — told dozens of employees across its technology division that they were losing their jobs. On the same day, at least 60 probationary employees at the Education Department were laid off, according to officials at the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union.
Dozens of probationary employees at the Small Business Administration were also told on Tuesday that they would be terminated, officials at A.F.G.E. said.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday directing agencies to start initiating plans for “large scale” reductions in staffing. The order gave Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency substantial power to reshape the federal work force and approve which career officials are hired in the future.
The Trump administration has also collected information from agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and others about their new hires, raising the specter of more mass firings in coming weeks. More than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees who had been hired in the last year and still had probationary status were warned last week that they could be fired at any time.
Kate Conger, Stacy Cowley and Matthew Goldstein contributed reporting.
February 13, 2025
Theodore Schleifer and Nicholas Nehamas
Reporting from Washington
Joe Gebbia attending the Met Gala at Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, in 2023. Credit: Nina Westervelt for The New York Times
One of Elon Musk’s closest friends, a billionaire co-founder of Airbnb, is taking a role in President Trump’s administration to help Mr. Musk carry out his drive to slash the federal bureaucracy, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder, is a board member at Tesla who lives in Austin, where Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, keeps a large compound. He is planning to start shortly in the federal government as part of Mr. Musk’s team, which has been called the Department of Government Efficiency, according to the person with knowledge of the matter.
It is not clear what precisely Mr. Gebbia will do or how formal his role will be. Many members of Mr. Musk’s government-overhaul effort float among agencies depending on the day’s tasks. Many of them consider their center of gravity to be the Office of Personnel Management or the General Services Administration.
Early Friday morning, Mr. Gebbia arrived at O.P.M.’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters in a black S.U.V. with a three-man security detail. He declined to comment as he was escorted inside by an O.P.M. official and one of his bodyguards.
Mr. Musk and his allies have taken over the United States Digital Service, now renamed the “United States DOGE Service.” The agency was established in 2014 to fix the federal government’s online services. Many of his foot soldiers are young software engineers with no government experience who have parachuted into federal agencies seeking to overhaul or even dismantle them.
Mr. Gebbia was until recently a Democratic donor, spending over $200,000 each to boost Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, and $20,000 to support Mr. Biden’s re-election run in 2023.
Mr. Gebbia has said his politics have shifted toward Republicans, in major part because of the advocacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Mr. Gebbia considers a political ally. Mr. Gebbia attended Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing last month, writing on X that morning that it was a “big day ahead for the future of health in America.”
Mr. Gebbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.
Mr. Trump has embraced leaders and donors in the tech industry, and many in Silicon Valley have rallied around him since he won the presidency.
In a post on X the day before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Gebbia said he had voted for Democrats dating back to Al Gore in 2000 but acknowledged supporting Mr. Trump in November. “I did a bad thing. Something the younger me would hate myself for doing. Something that only a few people (and maybe ByteDance) know: I voted Republican last November,” he wrote, referring to TikTok’s parent.
Mr. Gebbia’s net worth approaches $9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, thanks to his shares in Airbnb, which he co-founded in 2008. One of Mr. Gebbia’s co-founders, Brian Chesky, the C.E.O., has developed a close relationship with former President Barack Obama. But Mr. Gebbia has been considered among the three founders to have the most interest in — and time for — politics. He was originally the company’s chief product officer and has gradually stepped away from company operations to focus on personal pursuits, such as his stake in the N.B.A. team the San Antonio Spurs. He remains on Airbnb’s board.
Mr. Gebbia, whose background like Mr. Chesky’s is in industrial design, has become one of Mr. Musk’s closest friends in recent years. Mr. Musk had discussed buying a home from Mr. Gebbia’s new startup, Samara, and Mr. Gebbia’s texts to Mr. Musk have come up in recent Musk-related litigation. Mr. Musk frequently engages with Mr. Gebbia on X.
Mr. Gebbia has also posted admiringly on X about Mr. Musk’s new project in Washington, writing shortly after the election that there was a “historic corporate turnaround about to take place: DOGE.” This week, he praised the Musk team’s efforts to claw back $80 million that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent to New York City to cover some of the costs of housing migrants.
Kate Conger contributed reporting.
February 13, 2025
Michael S. SchmidtWilliam K. RashbaumMaggie Haberman and Jonah E. Bromwich
One of Elon Musk’s closest friends, a billionaire co-founder of Airbnb, is taking a role in President Trump’s administration to help Mr. Musk carry out his drive to slash the federal bureaucracy, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Joe Gebbia, the Airbnb co-founder, is a board member at Tesla who lives in Austin, where Mr. Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, keeps a large compound. He is planning to start shortly in the federal government as part of Mr. Musk’s team, which has been called the Department of Government Efficiency, according to the person with knowledge of the matter.
It is not clear what precisely Mr. Gebbia will do or how formal his role will be. Many members of Mr. Musk’s government-overhaul effort float among agencies depending on the day’s tasks. Many of them consider their center of gravity to be the Office of Personnel Management or the General Services Administration.
Early Friday morning, Mr. Gebbia arrived at O.P.M.’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters in a black S.U.V. with a three-man security detail. He declined to comment as he was escorted inside by an O.P.M. official and one of his bodyguards.
Mr. Musk and his allies have taken over the United States Digital Service, now renamed the “United States DOGE Service.” The agency was established in 2014 to fix the federal government’s online services. Many of his foot soldiers are young software engineers with no government experience who have parachuted into federal agencies seeking to overhaul or even dismantle them.
Mr. Gebbia was until recently a Democratic donor, spending over $200,000 each to boost Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, and $20,000 to support Mr. Biden’s re-election run in 2023.
Mr. Gebbia has said his politics have shifted toward Republicans, in major part because of the advocacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Mr. Gebbia considers a political ally. Mr. Gebbia attended Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing last month, writing on X that morning that it was a “big day ahead for the future of health in America.”
Mr. Gebbia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday evening.
Mr. Trump has embraced leaders and donors in the tech industry, and many in Silicon Valley have rallied around him since he won the presidency.
In a post on X the day before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Gebbia said he had voted for Democrats dating back to Al Gore in 2000 but acknowledged supporting Mr. Trump in November. “I did a bad thing. Something the younger me would hate myself for doing. Something that only a few people (and maybe ByteDance) know: I voted Republican last November,” he wrote, referring to TikTok’s parent.
Mr. Gebbia’s net worth approaches $9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, thanks to his shares in Airbnb, which he co-founded in 2008. One of Mr. Gebbia’s co-founders, Brian Chesky, the C.E.O., has developed a close relationship with former President Barack Obama. But Mr. Gebbia has been considered among the three founders to have the most interest in — and time for — politics. He was originally the company’s chief product officer and has gradually stepped away from company operations to focus on personal pursuits, such as his stake in the N.B.A. team the San Antonio Spurs. He remains on Airbnb’s board.
Mr. Gebbia, whose background like Mr. Chesky’s is in industrial design, has become one of Mr. Musk’s closest friends in recent years. Mr. Musk had discussed buying a home from Mr. Gebbia’s new startup, Samara, and Mr. Gebbia’s texts to Mr. Musk have come up in recent Musk-related litigation. Mr. Musk frequently engages with Mr. Gebbia on X.
Mr. Gebbia has also posted admiringly on X about Mr. Musk’s new project in Washington, writing shortly after the election that there was a “historic corporate turnaround about to take place: DOGE.” This week, he praised the Musk team’s efforts to claw back $80 million that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had sent to New York City to cover some of the costs of housing migrants.
Kate Conger contributed reporting.
February 13, 2025
Michael S. SchmidtWilliam K. RashbaumMaggie Haberman and Jonah E. Bromwich
The acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York resigned rather than follow an order to drop the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. Credit: Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Follow live updates on the furor over Eric Adams’s corruption case here.
President Trump had just taken office when lawyers for Mayor Eric Adams of New York went to the White House with an extraordinary request: They formally asked in a letter that the new president pardon the mayor in a federal corruption case that had yet to go to trial.
Just a week later, one of Mr. Trump’s top political appointees at the Justice Department called Mr. Adams’s lawyer, saying he wanted to talk about potentially dismissing the case.
What followed was a rapid series of exchanges between the lawyers and Mr. Trump’s administration that exploded this week into a confrontation between top Justice Department officials in Washington and New York prosecutors.
On Monday, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department sent a memo ordering prosecutors to dismiss the charges against the mayor. By Thursday, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned in protest over what she described as a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and the mayor of New York City. Five officials overseeing the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington stepped down soon after.
The conflagration originated in the back-and-forth between Mr. Adams’s lawyers, Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, and the Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, exchanges which have not been previously reported.
The series of events — in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client — represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States.
It also sends a message that, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department will make prosecutorial decisions based not on the merits of a case but on purely political concerns, longtime prosecutors and defense lawyers said.
Prompted by Mr. Bove, the mayor’s lawyers refined their approach until they landed on a highly unorthodox argument, records and interviews show — one that was ultimately reflected in Mr. Bove’s memo to prosecutors on Monday. That memo stated that the criminal case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability” to address illegal immigration and violent crime. It also pointedly said that the decision had nothing to do with the evidence or the law.
The order to drop the case came from the acting No. 2 official of the Justice Department, Emil Bove. Credit: Pool photo by Todd Heisler
This account of what led to Mr. Bove’s memo and the internal resistance with which it was met is based on interviews with five people with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as documents related to the case against Mr. Adams.
There remain several unanswered questions about the lead-up to the extraordinary decision, including how many times Mr. Spiro and Mr. Bove interacted.
But the sudden push to dismiss the case against Mr. Adams came even as Manhattan prosecutors were preparing to move forward with more charges against him.
Just weeks before the order to drop the case, prosecutors had said in a court filing submitted on Jan. 6, during the presidential transition, that they had uncovered unspecified “additional criminal conduct by Adams.”
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, Ms. Sassoon said that prosecutors in her office had been prepared to seek a new indictment of the mayor, “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the F.B.I., and that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme.”
Mr. Spiro shot back in a public statement, saying that if the Manhattan prosecutors “had any proof whatsoever that the mayor destroyed evidence, they would have brought those charges — as they continually threatened to do, but didn’t, over months and months.”
But in private, far from a courtroom, the picture was different. Amid rumblings of potential new charges, Mr. Spiro, Mr. Burck and Mr. Bove appear to have structured what the defense lawyers likely hoped would be the end of the corruption case against Mr. Adams.
On Wednesday, the same day that the acting U.S. attorney was privately saying she would not comply with the Justice Department’s directive, Mr. Spiro held a news conference and repeatedly called the charges politically motivated, saying that the Justice Department’s dismissal order was the only legitimate conclusion it could have reached.
The directive from Mr. Bove was like a neon sign signaling that a connection within Mr. Trump’s orbit matters as much as the facts. Until recently, Mr. Bove was a criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump. Mr. Spiro also represents Elon Musk, a close adviser to Mr. Trump and the world’s richest man. And Mr. Burck recently became the outside ethics adviser to Mr. Trump’s company.
“The message is getting out that if you want to save yourself from prosecution, it’s best to find someone from Trumpworld,” said Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. “Why is that bad? Generally, we like to think criminal prosecutions are resolved on the merits, not political intervention.”
The White House did not respond to several requests for comment. Officials at the Justice Department declined to engage with questions about the reporting.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September after a yearslong investigation. Manhattan prosecutors charged him with conspiracy, bribery and other crimes, saying that he had accepted more than $100,000 in flight upgrades and airline tickets; pressured the city’s Fire Department to sign off on the opening of a new high-rise Turkish consulate building despite safety concerns; and fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in public funds for his campaign.
The mayor pleaded not guilty. His informal efforts to win a pardon began shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory in the presidential election. The mayor sharpened his position on immigration, refused to say Vice President Kamala Harris’s name the day before the election, met with Mr. Trump near Mar-a-Lago and attended the inauguration.
Alex Spiro, left, and William A. Burck, lawyers for Mr. Adams. Mr. Spiro has said without providing evidence that the mayor was targeted in a politically motivated prosecution. Credit: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
The formal, legal effort to kill the case began immediately after Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Spiro sent a letter directly to the White House counsel, David Warrington, requesting a pretrial pardon from Mr. Trump. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed roughly 1,500 pardons, all prepared by Mr. Warrington, for people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
The letter from Mr. Spiro appeared to be focused on appealing to Mr. Trump’s own grievances with how the Justice Department treated him. It echoed the president’s arguments about the federal cases against him. It said that Mayor Adams was the victim of a “weaponized” Justice Department and leaks to the news media, particularly to The New York Times. It also mounted a lengthy attack on the merits of the case.
“President Trump has made clear his desire to reform the Department of Justice so that it is an agency that once again seeks justice and truth above all else,” Mr. Spiro wrote. “This case is a prime example.”
Mr. Trump had said in December that he would consider pardoning the mayor. But in the days after the letter was sent, the White House had been silent on the matter.
Around that time, the acting deputy attorney general, Mr. Bove, who represented Mr. Trump in three of his criminal indictments, reached out to Mr. Spiro.
In one of the conversations, Mr. Bove said that he would like to know how the prosecution was affecting Mr. Adams’s ability to do his job. Mr. Bove also said he wanted to have a meeting in Washington with prosecutors and Mr. Spiro to discuss dismissing the case.
That meeting occurred on Jan. 31, 11 days after Mr. Trump was sworn in.
Mr. Spiro — a brash defense lawyer with a record of representing celebrity clients like Mr. Musk — had repeatedly angered prosecutors with his contentious style, outlandish claims and unsupported accusations that the authorities were leaking confidential grand jury evidence.
But he was accompanied at the meeting by Mr. Burck, who is known for having a softer touch and has become increasingly close to Mr. Trump, his aides and his political appointees. Along with his appointment last month as the outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization, Mr. Burck helped lead the confirmation process of the Treasury secretary.
The meeting was attended by Ms. Sassoon and several of her deputies.
During the meeting, Mr. Bove signaled that the decision about whether to dismiss the case had nothing to do with its legal merits.
Danielle Sassoon, second from left, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi arguing that the case against Mr. Adams should not be dismissed. Credit: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Bove said he was interested in whether the case was hindering Mr. Adams’s leadership, particularly with regard to the city’s ability to cooperate with the federal government on Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Mr. Bove also said he was interested in whether the case, brought by the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, was a politically motivated prosecution meant to hurt Mr. Adams’s re-election prospects.
In her letter to Ms. Bondi, Ms. Sassoon said that she was “baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal.”
She also said that when she and other prosecutors attended the meeting, Mr. Adams’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.” She said that Mr. Bove had chastised a member of her team for taking notes and directed that they be confiscated when the meeting ended.
Asked to respond, Mr. Spiro said, “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us.
“We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement, and we truthfully answered it did,” he added.
Four days after the meeting, Mr. Adams’s team sent a letter to Mr. Bove at the Justice Department, this one signed by both Mr. Spiro and Mr. Burck. The letter showed the issues Mr. Bove was focused on.
“We wanted to address questions you have raised with respect to the indictment’s impact on Mayor Adams’s ability to lead New York City, including by working with the federal government on important issues of immigration enforcement and national security,” the letter said.
The letter went on to make a more refined argument about how the indictment was impinging on Mr. Adams’s role as mayor, while also attacking Mr. Williams for what it said was a politically motivated investigation.
The letter also said that trial preparation would unduly restrict Mr. Adams and that the trial itself would keep him stuck in court, potentially for more than a month. It said that Mr. Adams’s loss of a security clearance during the inquiry had hurt his ability to cooperate with federal authorities on important national security investigations.
And it asserted that Mr. Adams was aligned with the Trump administration on public safety and illegal immigration. If the prosecution proceeded, the letter said, Mr. Adams could not be an active partner to the Department of Homeland Security.
Despite those arguments — or perhaps in light of them — Mr. Bove’s directive to Manhattan federal prosecutors included an unusual footnote.
“The government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement,” it said.
Mr. Spiro has asserted that the case against Mr. Adams, if dropped, will not be revived, but the Justice Department memo left open the possibility that it could be brought again. It said that Mr. Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, will review the case after the mayoral election in November.
Mr. Spiro insisted on Wednesday that the plan would not give the Trump administration leverage over Mr. Adams.
“This isn’t hanging over anybody’s head,” he said. “This case is over. I think everybody knows this case.”
The mayor met on Thursday with Mr. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan.
Afterward, Mr. Adams announced he would issue an order allowing federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/opinion/musk-trump-government-takeover.html
Opinion
Follow live updates on the furor over Eric Adams’s corruption case here.
President Trump had just taken office when lawyers for Mayor Eric Adams of New York went to the White House with an extraordinary request: They formally asked in a letter that the new president pardon the mayor in a federal corruption case that had yet to go to trial.
Just a week later, one of Mr. Trump’s top political appointees at the Justice Department called Mr. Adams’s lawyer, saying he wanted to talk about potentially dismissing the case.
What followed was a rapid series of exchanges between the lawyers and Mr. Trump’s administration that exploded this week into a confrontation between top Justice Department officials in Washington and New York prosecutors.
On Monday, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department sent a memo ordering prosecutors to dismiss the charges against the mayor. By Thursday, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned in protest over what she described as a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and the mayor of New York City. Five officials overseeing the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington stepped down soon after.
The conflagration originated in the back-and-forth between Mr. Adams’s lawyers, Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, and the Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, exchanges which have not been previously reported.
The series of events — in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client — represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States.
It also sends a message that, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department will make prosecutorial decisions based not on the merits of a case but on purely political concerns, longtime prosecutors and defense lawyers said.
Prompted by Mr. Bove, the mayor’s lawyers refined their approach until they landed on a highly unorthodox argument, records and interviews show — one that was ultimately reflected in Mr. Bove’s memo to prosecutors on Monday. That memo stated that the criminal case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability” to address illegal immigration and violent crime. It also pointedly said that the decision had nothing to do with the evidence or the law.
The order to drop the case came from the acting No. 2 official of the Justice Department, Emil Bove. Credit: Pool photo by Todd Heisler
This account of what led to Mr. Bove’s memo and the internal resistance with which it was met is based on interviews with five people with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as documents related to the case against Mr. Adams.
There remain several unanswered questions about the lead-up to the extraordinary decision, including how many times Mr. Spiro and Mr. Bove interacted.
But the sudden push to dismiss the case against Mr. Adams came even as Manhattan prosecutors were preparing to move forward with more charges against him.
Just weeks before the order to drop the case, prosecutors had said in a court filing submitted on Jan. 6, during the presidential transition, that they had uncovered unspecified “additional criminal conduct by Adams.”
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday, Ms. Sassoon said that prosecutors in her office had been prepared to seek a new indictment of the mayor, “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the F.B.I., and that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme.”
Mr. Spiro shot back in a public statement, saying that if the Manhattan prosecutors “had any proof whatsoever that the mayor destroyed evidence, they would have brought those charges — as they continually threatened to do, but didn’t, over months and months.”
But in private, far from a courtroom, the picture was different. Amid rumblings of potential new charges, Mr. Spiro, Mr. Burck and Mr. Bove appear to have structured what the defense lawyers likely hoped would be the end of the corruption case against Mr. Adams.
On Wednesday, the same day that the acting U.S. attorney was privately saying she would not comply with the Justice Department’s directive, Mr. Spiro held a news conference and repeatedly called the charges politically motivated, saying that the Justice Department’s dismissal order was the only legitimate conclusion it could have reached.
The directive from Mr. Bove was like a neon sign signaling that a connection within Mr. Trump’s orbit matters as much as the facts. Until recently, Mr. Bove was a criminal defense lawyer for Mr. Trump. Mr. Spiro also represents Elon Musk, a close adviser to Mr. Trump and the world’s richest man. And Mr. Burck recently became the outside ethics adviser to Mr. Trump’s company.
“The message is getting out that if you want to save yourself from prosecution, it’s best to find someone from Trumpworld,” said Daniel C. Richman, a law professor at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor in Manhattan. “Why is that bad? Generally, we like to think criminal prosecutions are resolved on the merits, not political intervention.”
The White House did not respond to several requests for comment. Officials at the Justice Department declined to engage with questions about the reporting.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September after a yearslong investigation. Manhattan prosecutors charged him with conspiracy, bribery and other crimes, saying that he had accepted more than $100,000 in flight upgrades and airline tickets; pressured the city’s Fire Department to sign off on the opening of a new high-rise Turkish consulate building despite safety concerns; and fraudulently obtained millions of dollars in public funds for his campaign.
The mayor pleaded not guilty. His informal efforts to win a pardon began shortly after Mr. Trump’s victory in the presidential election. The mayor sharpened his position on immigration, refused to say Vice President Kamala Harris’s name the day before the election, met with Mr. Trump near Mar-a-Lago and attended the inauguration.
Alex Spiro, left, and William A. Burck, lawyers for Mr. Adams. Mr. Spiro has said without providing evidence that the mayor was targeted in a politically motivated prosecution. Credit: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
The formal, legal effort to kill the case began immediately after Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Spiro sent a letter directly to the White House counsel, David Warrington, requesting a pretrial pardon from Mr. Trump. On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed roughly 1,500 pardons, all prepared by Mr. Warrington, for people convicted in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
The letter from Mr. Spiro appeared to be focused on appealing to Mr. Trump’s own grievances with how the Justice Department treated him. It echoed the president’s arguments about the federal cases against him. It said that Mayor Adams was the victim of a “weaponized” Justice Department and leaks to the news media, particularly to The New York Times. It also mounted a lengthy attack on the merits of the case.
“President Trump has made clear his desire to reform the Department of Justice so that it is an agency that once again seeks justice and truth above all else,” Mr. Spiro wrote. “This case is a prime example.”
Mr. Trump had said in December that he would consider pardoning the mayor. But in the days after the letter was sent, the White House had been silent on the matter.
Around that time, the acting deputy attorney general, Mr. Bove, who represented Mr. Trump in three of his criminal indictments, reached out to Mr. Spiro.
In one of the conversations, Mr. Bove said that he would like to know how the prosecution was affecting Mr. Adams’s ability to do his job. Mr. Bove also said he wanted to have a meeting in Washington with prosecutors and Mr. Spiro to discuss dismissing the case.
That meeting occurred on Jan. 31, 11 days after Mr. Trump was sworn in.
Mr. Spiro — a brash defense lawyer with a record of representing celebrity clients like Mr. Musk — had repeatedly angered prosecutors with his contentious style, outlandish claims and unsupported accusations that the authorities were leaking confidential grand jury evidence.
But he was accompanied at the meeting by Mr. Burck, who is known for having a softer touch and has become increasingly close to Mr. Trump, his aides and his political appointees. Along with his appointment last month as the outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization, Mr. Burck helped lead the confirmation process of the Treasury secretary.
The meeting was attended by Ms. Sassoon and several of her deputies.
During the meeting, Mr. Bove signaled that the decision about whether to dismiss the case had nothing to do with its legal merits.
Danielle Sassoon, second from left, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi arguing that the case against Mr. Adams should not be dismissed. Credit: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Bove said he was interested in whether the case was hindering Mr. Adams’s leadership, particularly with regard to the city’s ability to cooperate with the federal government on Mr. Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Mr. Bove also said he was interested in whether the case, brought by the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, was a politically motivated prosecution meant to hurt Mr. Adams’s re-election prospects.
In her letter to Ms. Bondi, Ms. Sassoon said that she was “baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal.”
She also said that when she and other prosecutors attended the meeting, Mr. Adams’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.” She said that Mr. Bove had chastised a member of her team for taking notes and directed that they be confiscated when the meeting ended.
Asked to respond, Mr. Spiro said, “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us.
“We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement, and we truthfully answered it did,” he added.
Four days after the meeting, Mr. Adams’s team sent a letter to Mr. Bove at the Justice Department, this one signed by both Mr. Spiro and Mr. Burck. The letter showed the issues Mr. Bove was focused on.
“We wanted to address questions you have raised with respect to the indictment’s impact on Mayor Adams’s ability to lead New York City, including by working with the federal government on important issues of immigration enforcement and national security,” the letter said.
The letter went on to make a more refined argument about how the indictment was impinging on Mr. Adams’s role as mayor, while also attacking Mr. Williams for what it said was a politically motivated investigation.
The letter also said that trial preparation would unduly restrict Mr. Adams and that the trial itself would keep him stuck in court, potentially for more than a month. It said that Mr. Adams’s loss of a security clearance during the inquiry had hurt his ability to cooperate with federal authorities on important national security investigations.
And it asserted that Mr. Adams was aligned with the Trump administration on public safety and illegal immigration. If the prosecution proceeded, the letter said, Mr. Adams could not be an active partner to the Department of Homeland Security.
Despite those arguments — or perhaps in light of them — Mr. Bove’s directive to Manhattan federal prosecutors included an unusual footnote.
“The government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement,” it said.
Mr. Spiro has asserted that the case against Mr. Adams, if dropped, will not be revived, but the Justice Department memo left open the possibility that it could be brought again. It said that Mr. Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney in Manhattan, who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, will review the case after the mayoral election in November.
Mr. Spiro insisted on Wednesday that the plan would not give the Trump administration leverage over Mr. Adams.
“This isn’t hanging over anybody’s head,” he said. “This case is over. I think everybody knows this case.”
The mayor met on Thursday with Mr. Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan.
Afterward, Mr. Adams announced he would issue an order allowing federal immigration authorities into the Rikers Island jail complex.
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/opinion/musk-trump-government-takeover.html
Opinion
Look Past Elon Musk’s Chaos. There’s Something More Sinister at Work
Credit: Ioulex for The New York Times
Listen to this article · 8:59 min
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by Tressie McMillan Cottom
February 12, 2025
New York Times
Leer en español
Whatever you choose to call it, Elon Musk has captured the inner workings of the U.S. government on President Trump’s behalf. His operatives reportedly infiltrated the General Services Administration, gained access to the nation’s system for issuing payments like tax refunds, locked workers out of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management and strong-armed U.S.A.I.D. into halting humanitarian work across the globe. They have vowed to slash essential research budgets and have put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in their sights.
Republican voters signed up for “The Trump Show: Politics Edition.” Musk is producing and distributing that show, one chaotic bite at a time.
In response to a brutal week for democracy, the Democratic leadership in Congress held a news conference. Chuck Schumer led those gathered in a chant, “We will win,” hands held high with Maxine Waters. Elizabeth Warren did a nice job of explaining what the payments mean to regular people. They framed the takeover of the Treasury Department’s payment system as an unprecedented overreach of power.
But the minority party cannot just chant. It has to act on what isn’t debatable: Trump has deputized a questionably legal extragovernmental actor. His mission is not just to dismantle the federal government, but to demoralize it.
So far, Musk’s DOGE gang has outmaneuvered the Democrats and produced a governmental soap opera that confuses some Americans but feeds their fans what they want. Storming anodyne cubicles as if they’re Waterloo creates chaos and satisfies fans’ desire to vicariously storm the seat of world power. In Musk, Trump has found something important for his stylistic approach to authoritarianism. He needs a muckraker who can create content for our media environment.
I could not help but feel that the Democrats’ response, staged for 20th-century media with a lectern, microphones and standing outside in the cold, could not compete with the emotional power of content. And that could have disastrous consequences. DOGE is a democracy wrecking machine. It is targeting the government’s plumbing, the infrastructure that makes the state reliable and legitimate for millions of Americans.
DOGE is also a propaganda machine. A friend asked me recently why a president who controls both legislative chambers would need to elbow his administration’s way into relatively small, if important, bureaucratic offices. Why, he wondered, all the questionably legal mafia-like tactics?
The easy answer is that this is just Trump’s style and Musk is unpredictable. That is true, but it does not clearly assess the strategic efficacy of deploying gamified smash-and-grab antics.
Musk’s escapades are political posturing staged like a video game side quest. The DOGE playbook is to target an office of which most Americans have only a vague notion. Then Musk’s operatives label the office a villain in overblown comic terms — “a criminal organization” as Musk called the U.S. Agency for International Development. Then, the executive branch uses DOGE to pick a fight it knows it can win.
Musk’s fans love his narration of power as a vicarious gamelike experience of dominance. These fans don’t find the DOGE escapades chaotic or confusing. If anything, the bombastic flouting of norms and laws makes the world more sensible to them. It is government and civic life they don’t understand. Musk clarifies a scary world for them, putting it in terms they understand. Bad guy. Good guy. Evil. Villain. Kill. Win.
This is propaganda, but it is also a skilled manipulation of content in a content-saturated culture. Increasingly we cannot escape the closed world of bite-size performativity that feels like the real world. All of our emotions are fuel for the content machines that don’t care what we feel, only that we do.
Musk’s playbook makes us feel, with all the drama of a middle school burn book. His purchase of Twitter came with similar dramatics. He made an offer and tried to back out of it, while his online fans painted the social media company as Marxist and censorious. After completing his purchase, Musk walked into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink. It was something comic book fans recognized as an Easter egg — a semiotic message that looks absurd or chaotic to outsiders but makes perfect sense to insiders who know the Musk lore.
And that is what Elon Musk does well. He turns routine cutthroat corporate shenanigans — stock buyouts and finance deals that usually would not leave the business press — into content for his fans. When he did that for Twitter or Tesla or SpaceX, it made an otherwise uncharismatic billionaire seem like a real-life Tony Stark.
Now, he is making the same kind of chaos-as-content in the federal government. But here, the stakes are far higher, and all of Musk’s preening on social media obscures what is actually happening. That is what content is really good at doing. It feels transparent to see an influencer bake bread in her grandma chic retro kitchen or to see a billionaire storm a corporate headquarters to vanquish his enemies to unemployment. But content does not reveal the machinery of influencing — the deals signed, the NDAs issued, the metrics used to measure the dollar value of the audience’s emotional response. In politics, content can hide the money and power at play.
Content feels a lot like old school political spin, but unlike spin, it can be completely captured, its amplification manipulated and the response to it monetized. It can look like information while conveying little real meaning. But the problem with content isn’t that it is inherently empty or fake; it generates real emotion. But when it comes to civic life, it does everything in its power to keep you from taking any action beyond its economic interests.
It is fast becoming clear that this content-driven chaos is going to be the M.O. of Trump 2.0. Trump may have learned in his first term that there is a political price for not feeding your loyalists enough content. Governance got in the way of the content machine he built on the campaign trail. Since then, he has had four years to refine his strategy. Chaos is central to his deployment of unchecked executive power. But chaos has to be tended like a fire. It needs the right amount of constant oxygen to keep it going.
That is Musk’s utility to Trump. He is willing to fill in for Trump by consistently producing DOGE’s bureaucratic takeovers as content.
If you are confused when you see Musk narrating a serious civic affair like a video game side quest, understand that you are not the intended audience. What looks like chaos to you is actually clarifying content to someone else. Those who understood Musk’s sink bit thought that a chaotic world made a bit more sense. Everyone else wondered why a billionaire was lugging around a porcelain fixture.
So wherever the content seems unbelievable, inscrutable or chaotic, it is best not to look away but rather to look around it, for actions or effects that are far more portentous. Musk, for all his antics, is now at an office that aligns with his technological expertise, his contacts, his grudges and his financial interests. His content may be about U.S.A.I.D. one week and C.F.P.B. the next. But looking beneath the content’s chaotic veneer reveals a strategic takeover of national interests that will demolish the state’s functionality in a way that benefits the ones swinging the hammer.
What we have is a president who made his career as a real estate developer and an empowered minion leading the federal government to move fast and break things. It is a politic of socialism-for-me and scarcity-for-thee: chasing government contracts while simultaneously compromising the government’s ability to pay its bills.
Chaos wants to shut down thinking and feeling by trapping us in the emotional state of its choosing. Name-calling, rudeness, childishness and pettiness put those of us who do not want to be the Twitch audience to Trump and Musk’s content on the defensive. Looking away would preserve our sanity. But content’s secret politics is that it wants people to look away while it works on the people who don’t. So what do we do about it?
You acknowledge that the chaos is smoke, but the heist is the fire. Don’t look away from the smoke. Look through it for what is being taken, redefined and reallocated. Stop pointing out the hypocrisy. The other side does not care. Its content makes the people there feel powerful but action is the only real power.
The left wing of the Democratic Party finally convinced the once-resistant Chuck Schumer that opposition is action. It is the best tool that a minority party has. More important, it expands our field of play beyond the area that Trump and Musk now control. If you are not inciting yourself or others to act, your political rhetoric will not eclipse Trump’s chaos.
More on DOGE and the federal government
Opinion | Zeynep Tufekci
The Pharmaceutical Industry Heads Into Musk’s Wood Chipper
Feb. 11, 2025
Opinion | Michelle Goldberg
Why Musk and Vance Went to Bat for a Self-Described Racist
Feb. 10, 2025
Opinion | Noah Millman
Welcome to America’s Fourth Great Constitutional Rupture
Feb. 10, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2022. She is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow. @tressiemcphd
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/arts/music/trump-kennedy-center-chairman.html
Trump Made Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired
The president solidified his grip on the performing arts complex as the center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was fired.
Deborah F. Rutter at the 46th Annual Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington in 2023. She was fired from her job as president of the center on Wednesday. Credit: Pool photo by Ron Sachs
by Javier C. Hernández and Robin Pogrebin
February 12, 2025
New York Times
President Trump was made chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, he announced on Wednesday, cementing his grip on an institution that he recently purged of Biden appointees.
The center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was then fired from her position, the center said. Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, was appointed the center’s interim president.
Mr. Trump posted on social media: “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!”
Mr. Grenell visited the center on Wednesday, according to an official at the center.
The center announced on Wednesday a new slate of board members — all appointed by Mr. Trump — and said in a statement that the new board elected Mr. Trump chairman and “terminated” Ms. Rutter’s contract.
Mr. Trump’s actions prompted an outcry in the cultural world.
The superstar soprano Renée Fleming said on Wednesday that she would step down as an artistic adviser to the center. She praised the center’s departing leaders and said that “out of respect, I think it right to depart as well.”
“I’ve treasured the bipartisan support for this institution as a beacon of America at our best,” Ms. Fleming said in a statement. “I hope the Kennedy Center continues to flourish and serve the passionate and diverse audience in our nation’s capital and across the country.”
She was not the only high-profile departure. Shonda Rhimes, who had been treasurer of the Kennedy Center, resigned from the board, a spokeswoman for Ms. Rhimes said.
And the singer and songwriter Ben Folds said he would also resign his post as an adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, which is overseen by the Kennedy Center.
“Given developments at the Kennedy Center, effective today I am resigning as artistic adviser to the N.S.O.,” Mr. Folds wrote on Instagram. “Mostly, and above all, I will miss the musicians of our nation’s symphony orchestra — just the best!”
Renée Fleming, at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington in 2023. The soprano said on Wednesday that she would step down as an artistic adviser to the center. Credit: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Ms. Rutter said in a statement about her departure that it had been the honor of her career to lead the institution, which, in addition to a performing arts center, is a memorial to former President John F. Kennedy. She did not describe being fired.
“The goal of the Kennedy Center has been to live up to our namesake, serving as a beacon for the world and ensuring our work reflects America,” she said. “I depart my position proud of all we accomplished to meet that ambition. From the art on our stages to the students we have impacted in classrooms across America, everything we have done at the Kennedy Center has been about uplifting the human spirit in service of strengthening the culture of our great nation.”
The Kennedy Center has historically been run by bipartisan boards in the past. On Monday, the Trump administration officially removed 18 board members who had been appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the board chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein.
The center posted a revised list of board members on its website on Wednesday that showed how much things had changed.
While the board had been roughly split between Biden and Trump appointees until recently, it is now entirely made up of appointees of Mr. Trump. The new board includes a litany of Trump loyalists, including the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; Dan Scavino, a longtime Trump aide; and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance.
Ms. Rutter, the center’s president since 2014, said last month that she planned to step down at the end of the year.
President Trump’s move to purge the board of Biden appointees and install himself as its chairman amounted to some of the most sweeping changes in the Kennedy Center’s 54-year history. But it also raised questions about its legality.
The Kennedy Center said in a statement last week that while such a purge of board members had never happened before, it did not see anything in the law to prevent it. One official there said that the center’s thinking was guided in part by court rulings after Mr. Biden removed a few Trump appointees from a board and a council.
Rory Kennedy at a memorial service in October for her mother, Ethel Kennedy, in Washington. Ms. Kennedy, the youngest child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, said she found President Trump’s actions “deeply troubling.” Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
In a bit of symmetry, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden removed their predecessor’s press secretaries from boards before their terms were up. Mr. Trump removed Karine Jean-Pierre, who had been Mr. Biden’s press secretary, from the Kennedy Center board. Mr. Biden removed Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary, from the Naval Academy’s board of visitors.
Mr. Spicer was removed from the Naval Academy board along with Russell Vought, who had been the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Mr. Trump’s first term and was recently reappointed to the post in his second term. The two men sued the Biden administration, arguing that Mr. Biden did not have the power to remove them. A district court in Washington sided with the Biden administration, saying board members had no such protections.
In 2023, a federal appeals court in Washington came to a similar conclusion in a case involving another Trump official, Roger Severino, who was removed by Mr. Biden from a position on the council of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
“A defined term of office, standing alone, does not curtail the President’s removal power during the officeholder’s service,” the court said.
Christopher Mills, a lawyer who represented Mr. Severino and Mr. Spicer, said the 2023 decision established a precedent — that being appointed to a fixed term was not enough to protect a board member from dismissal.
“It’s clear that if a statute just provides a term of years, the courts have said that doesn’t protect against removal,” he said. “Removal of board members like that is consistent with a historical trend we’ve seen with presidents from both parties asserting more control over agencies.”
Other legal experts questioned the legality of the president’s moves, noting that the statute establishing the Kennedy Center states that board members “shall” serve six-year terms. “The statute is meant to create a term of office,” said Noah A. Rosenblum, an associate professor of law at New York University.
He described Mr. Trump’s actions at the Kennedy Center as “totally of a piece with the other assertions of executive power we’ve seen in the past month.”
Legal experts say Mr. Trump’s actions leave the Kennedy Center in uncharted territory.
“Typically, you don’t get the right to appoint yourself,” said Daniel Kurtz, a leading nonprofit lawyer. “That’s not a normal provision.”
Rory Kennedy, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and the youngest child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, said in an interview earlier this week that she found President Trump’s actions “deeply troubling.”
“This institution, named in honor of my uncle, stands as a beacon of cultural enrichment and artistic expression,” she said. “Let us honor President Kennedy’s legacy by defending institutions like the Kennedy Center against political interference and by demanding accountability from our executive office.”
Trump has a stormy history with the Kennedy Center Honors, the institution’s most important fund-raiser of the year, which is televised and includes a White House reception ahead of the awards. After several of the artists who were honored in 2017, early in first Trump administration, criticized Mr. Trump and suggested that they would boycott the White House reception, Mr. Trump broke with precedent and stayed away from the Honors galas for his entire term.
The N.E.A.’s New Gender and Diversity Edicts Worry Arts Groups
Javier C. Hernández reports on classical music, opera and dance in New York City and beyond. More about Javier C. Hernández
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for nearly 30 years, covers arts and culture. More about Robin Pogrebin
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 14, 2025, Section C, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Outcry Greets Changes at the Kennedy Center. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
See more on: Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, U.S. Politics
The Trump Administration’s First 100 Days
Justice Dept. Showdown: A crisis at the department over the Adams corruption case is an early test of the criminal justice system’s resilience against a retribution-minded president and his appointees.
A Whirlwind Through Europe: The new Trump foreign policy team has brought a dizzying message to European allies on A.I., Ukraine and more. It has already left many angered and chagrined.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The vaccine skeptic and former presidential candidate who threw his “medical freedom” movement behind President Trump was confirmed as health secretary.
‘The Boss of Everyone and Everything’: Trump is increasingly trying to enforce his will on areas like the arts, sports, news, private companies and college campuses.
Extension for U.S.A.I.D.: For at least another week, a judge will keep a hold on a Trump directive placing more than 2,000 employees on administrative leave and forcing the return of overseas workers.
‘Deregulation by Firings’: Stop-work orders, firings and litigation pauses by the administration have hobbled agencies intended to protect ordinary Americans, consumer advocates say. But business groups have long favored regulatory relief.
Credit: Ioulex for The New York Times
Listen to this article · 8:59 min
Learn more
by Tressie McMillan Cottom
February 12, 2025
New York Times
Leer en español
Whatever you choose to call it, Elon Musk has captured the inner workings of the U.S. government on President Trump’s behalf. His operatives reportedly infiltrated the General Services Administration, gained access to the nation’s system for issuing payments like tax refunds, locked workers out of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management and strong-armed U.S.A.I.D. into halting humanitarian work across the globe. They have vowed to slash essential research budgets and have put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in their sights.
Republican voters signed up for “The Trump Show: Politics Edition.” Musk is producing and distributing that show, one chaotic bite at a time.
In response to a brutal week for democracy, the Democratic leadership in Congress held a news conference. Chuck Schumer led those gathered in a chant, “We will win,” hands held high with Maxine Waters. Elizabeth Warren did a nice job of explaining what the payments mean to regular people. They framed the takeover of the Treasury Department’s payment system as an unprecedented overreach of power.
But the minority party cannot just chant. It has to act on what isn’t debatable: Trump has deputized a questionably legal extragovernmental actor. His mission is not just to dismantle the federal government, but to demoralize it.
So far, Musk’s DOGE gang has outmaneuvered the Democrats and produced a governmental soap opera that confuses some Americans but feeds their fans what they want. Storming anodyne cubicles as if they’re Waterloo creates chaos and satisfies fans’ desire to vicariously storm the seat of world power. In Musk, Trump has found something important for his stylistic approach to authoritarianism. He needs a muckraker who can create content for our media environment.
I could not help but feel that the Democrats’ response, staged for 20th-century media with a lectern, microphones and standing outside in the cold, could not compete with the emotional power of content. And that could have disastrous consequences. DOGE is a democracy wrecking machine. It is targeting the government’s plumbing, the infrastructure that makes the state reliable and legitimate for millions of Americans.
DOGE is also a propaganda machine. A friend asked me recently why a president who controls both legislative chambers would need to elbow his administration’s way into relatively small, if important, bureaucratic offices. Why, he wondered, all the questionably legal mafia-like tactics?
The easy answer is that this is just Trump’s style and Musk is unpredictable. That is true, but it does not clearly assess the strategic efficacy of deploying gamified smash-and-grab antics.
Musk’s escapades are political posturing staged like a video game side quest. The DOGE playbook is to target an office of which most Americans have only a vague notion. Then Musk’s operatives label the office a villain in overblown comic terms — “a criminal organization” as Musk called the U.S. Agency for International Development. Then, the executive branch uses DOGE to pick a fight it knows it can win.
Musk’s fans love his narration of power as a vicarious gamelike experience of dominance. These fans don’t find the DOGE escapades chaotic or confusing. If anything, the bombastic flouting of norms and laws makes the world more sensible to them. It is government and civic life they don’t understand. Musk clarifies a scary world for them, putting it in terms they understand. Bad guy. Good guy. Evil. Villain. Kill. Win.
This is propaganda, but it is also a skilled manipulation of content in a content-saturated culture. Increasingly we cannot escape the closed world of bite-size performativity that feels like the real world. All of our emotions are fuel for the content machines that don’t care what we feel, only that we do.
Musk’s playbook makes us feel, with all the drama of a middle school burn book. His purchase of Twitter came with similar dramatics. He made an offer and tried to back out of it, while his online fans painted the social media company as Marxist and censorious. After completing his purchase, Musk walked into Twitter headquarters carrying a sink. It was something comic book fans recognized as an Easter egg — a semiotic message that looks absurd or chaotic to outsiders but makes perfect sense to insiders who know the Musk lore.
And that is what Elon Musk does well. He turns routine cutthroat corporate shenanigans — stock buyouts and finance deals that usually would not leave the business press — into content for his fans. When he did that for Twitter or Tesla or SpaceX, it made an otherwise uncharismatic billionaire seem like a real-life Tony Stark.
Now, he is making the same kind of chaos-as-content in the federal government. But here, the stakes are far higher, and all of Musk’s preening on social media obscures what is actually happening. That is what content is really good at doing. It feels transparent to see an influencer bake bread in her grandma chic retro kitchen or to see a billionaire storm a corporate headquarters to vanquish his enemies to unemployment. But content does not reveal the machinery of influencing — the deals signed, the NDAs issued, the metrics used to measure the dollar value of the audience’s emotional response. In politics, content can hide the money and power at play.
Content feels a lot like old school political spin, but unlike spin, it can be completely captured, its amplification manipulated and the response to it monetized. It can look like information while conveying little real meaning. But the problem with content isn’t that it is inherently empty or fake; it generates real emotion. But when it comes to civic life, it does everything in its power to keep you from taking any action beyond its economic interests.
It is fast becoming clear that this content-driven chaos is going to be the M.O. of Trump 2.0. Trump may have learned in his first term that there is a political price for not feeding your loyalists enough content. Governance got in the way of the content machine he built on the campaign trail. Since then, he has had four years to refine his strategy. Chaos is central to his deployment of unchecked executive power. But chaos has to be tended like a fire. It needs the right amount of constant oxygen to keep it going.
That is Musk’s utility to Trump. He is willing to fill in for Trump by consistently producing DOGE’s bureaucratic takeovers as content.
If you are confused when you see Musk narrating a serious civic affair like a video game side quest, understand that you are not the intended audience. What looks like chaos to you is actually clarifying content to someone else. Those who understood Musk’s sink bit thought that a chaotic world made a bit more sense. Everyone else wondered why a billionaire was lugging around a porcelain fixture.
So wherever the content seems unbelievable, inscrutable or chaotic, it is best not to look away but rather to look around it, for actions or effects that are far more portentous. Musk, for all his antics, is now at an office that aligns with his technological expertise, his contacts, his grudges and his financial interests. His content may be about U.S.A.I.D. one week and C.F.P.B. the next. But looking beneath the content’s chaotic veneer reveals a strategic takeover of national interests that will demolish the state’s functionality in a way that benefits the ones swinging the hammer.
What we have is a president who made his career as a real estate developer and an empowered minion leading the federal government to move fast and break things. It is a politic of socialism-for-me and scarcity-for-thee: chasing government contracts while simultaneously compromising the government’s ability to pay its bills.
Chaos wants to shut down thinking and feeling by trapping us in the emotional state of its choosing. Name-calling, rudeness, childishness and pettiness put those of us who do not want to be the Twitch audience to Trump and Musk’s content on the defensive. Looking away would preserve our sanity. But content’s secret politics is that it wants people to look away while it works on the people who don’t. So what do we do about it?
You acknowledge that the chaos is smoke, but the heist is the fire. Don’t look away from the smoke. Look through it for what is being taken, redefined and reallocated. Stop pointing out the hypocrisy. The other side does not care. Its content makes the people there feel powerful but action is the only real power.
The left wing of the Democratic Party finally convinced the once-resistant Chuck Schumer that opposition is action. It is the best tool that a minority party has. More important, it expands our field of play beyond the area that Trump and Musk now control. If you are not inciting yourself or others to act, your political rhetoric will not eclipse Trump’s chaos.
More on DOGE and the federal government
Opinion | Zeynep Tufekci
The Pharmaceutical Industry Heads Into Musk’s Wood Chipper
Feb. 11, 2025
Opinion | Michelle Goldberg
Why Musk and Vance Went to Bat for a Self-Described Racist
Feb. 10, 2025
Opinion | Noah Millman
Welcome to America’s Fourth Great Constitutional Rupture
Feb. 10, 2025
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2022. She is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, the author of “Thick: And Other Essays” and a 2020 MacArthur fellow. @tressiemcphd
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/arts/music/trump-kennedy-center-chairman.html
Trump Made Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired
The president solidified his grip on the performing arts complex as the center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was fired.
Deborah F. Rutter at the 46th Annual Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington in 2023. She was fired from her job as president of the center on Wednesday. Credit: Pool photo by Ron Sachs
by Javier C. Hernández and Robin Pogrebin
February 12, 2025
New York Times
President Trump was made chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, he announced on Wednesday, cementing his grip on an institution that he recently purged of Biden appointees.
The center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was then fired from her position, the center said. Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, was appointed the center’s interim president.
Mr. Trump posted on social media: “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!”
Mr. Grenell visited the center on Wednesday, according to an official at the center.
The center announced on Wednesday a new slate of board members — all appointed by Mr. Trump — and said in a statement that the new board elected Mr. Trump chairman and “terminated” Ms. Rutter’s contract.
Mr. Trump’s actions prompted an outcry in the cultural world.
The superstar soprano Renée Fleming said on Wednesday that she would step down as an artistic adviser to the center. She praised the center’s departing leaders and said that “out of respect, I think it right to depart as well.”
“I’ve treasured the bipartisan support for this institution as a beacon of America at our best,” Ms. Fleming said in a statement. “I hope the Kennedy Center continues to flourish and serve the passionate and diverse audience in our nation’s capital and across the country.”
She was not the only high-profile departure. Shonda Rhimes, who had been treasurer of the Kennedy Center, resigned from the board, a spokeswoman for Ms. Rhimes said.
And the singer and songwriter Ben Folds said he would also resign his post as an adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra, which is overseen by the Kennedy Center.
“Given developments at the Kennedy Center, effective today I am resigning as artistic adviser to the N.S.O.,” Mr. Folds wrote on Instagram. “Mostly, and above all, I will miss the musicians of our nation’s symphony orchestra — just the best!”
Renée Fleming, at the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington in 2023. The soprano said on Wednesday that she would step down as an artistic adviser to the center. Credit: Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Ms. Rutter said in a statement about her departure that it had been the honor of her career to lead the institution, which, in addition to a performing arts center, is a memorial to former President John F. Kennedy. She did not describe being fired.
“The goal of the Kennedy Center has been to live up to our namesake, serving as a beacon for the world and ensuring our work reflects America,” she said. “I depart my position proud of all we accomplished to meet that ambition. From the art on our stages to the students we have impacted in classrooms across America, everything we have done at the Kennedy Center has been about uplifting the human spirit in service of strengthening the culture of our great nation.”
The Kennedy Center has historically been run by bipartisan boards in the past. On Monday, the Trump administration officially removed 18 board members who had been appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the board chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein.
The center posted a revised list of board members on its website on Wednesday that showed how much things had changed.
While the board had been roughly split between Biden and Trump appointees until recently, it is now entirely made up of appointees of Mr. Trump. The new board includes a litany of Trump loyalists, including the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles; Dan Scavino, a longtime Trump aide; and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance.
Ms. Rutter, the center’s president since 2014, said last month that she planned to step down at the end of the year.
President Trump’s move to purge the board of Biden appointees and install himself as its chairman amounted to some of the most sweeping changes in the Kennedy Center’s 54-year history. But it also raised questions about its legality.
The Kennedy Center said in a statement last week that while such a purge of board members had never happened before, it did not see anything in the law to prevent it. One official there said that the center’s thinking was guided in part by court rulings after Mr. Biden removed a few Trump appointees from a board and a council.
Rory Kennedy at a memorial service in October for her mother, Ethel Kennedy, in Washington. Ms. Kennedy, the youngest child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, said she found President Trump’s actions “deeply troubling.” Credit: Eric Lee/The New York Times
In a bit of symmetry, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden removed their predecessor’s press secretaries from boards before their terms were up. Mr. Trump removed Karine Jean-Pierre, who had been Mr. Biden’s press secretary, from the Kennedy Center board. Mr. Biden removed Sean Spicer, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary, from the Naval Academy’s board of visitors.
Mr. Spicer was removed from the Naval Academy board along with Russell Vought, who had been the director of the Office of Management and Budget during Mr. Trump’s first term and was recently reappointed to the post in his second term. The two men sued the Biden administration, arguing that Mr. Biden did not have the power to remove them. A district court in Washington sided with the Biden administration, saying board members had no such protections.
In 2023, a federal appeals court in Washington came to a similar conclusion in a case involving another Trump official, Roger Severino, who was removed by Mr. Biden from a position on the council of the Administrative Conference of the United States.
“A defined term of office, standing alone, does not curtail the President’s removal power during the officeholder’s service,” the court said.
Christopher Mills, a lawyer who represented Mr. Severino and Mr. Spicer, said the 2023 decision established a precedent — that being appointed to a fixed term was not enough to protect a board member from dismissal.
“It’s clear that if a statute just provides a term of years, the courts have said that doesn’t protect against removal,” he said. “Removal of board members like that is consistent with a historical trend we’ve seen with presidents from both parties asserting more control over agencies.”
Other legal experts questioned the legality of the president’s moves, noting that the statute establishing the Kennedy Center states that board members “shall” serve six-year terms. “The statute is meant to create a term of office,” said Noah A. Rosenblum, an associate professor of law at New York University.
He described Mr. Trump’s actions at the Kennedy Center as “totally of a piece with the other assertions of executive power we’ve seen in the past month.”
Legal experts say Mr. Trump’s actions leave the Kennedy Center in uncharted territory.
“Typically, you don’t get the right to appoint yourself,” said Daniel Kurtz, a leading nonprofit lawyer. “That’s not a normal provision.”
Rory Kennedy, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and the youngest child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, said in an interview earlier this week that she found President Trump’s actions “deeply troubling.”
“This institution, named in honor of my uncle, stands as a beacon of cultural enrichment and artistic expression,” she said. “Let us honor President Kennedy’s legacy by defending institutions like the Kennedy Center against political interference and by demanding accountability from our executive office.”
Trump has a stormy history with the Kennedy Center Honors, the institution’s most important fund-raiser of the year, which is televised and includes a White House reception ahead of the awards. After several of the artists who were honored in 2017, early in first Trump administration, criticized Mr. Trump and suggested that they would boycott the White House reception, Mr. Trump broke with precedent and stayed away from the Honors galas for his entire term.
The N.E.A.’s New Gender and Diversity Edicts Worry Arts Groups
Javier C. Hernández reports on classical music, opera and dance in New York City and beyond. More about Javier C. Hernández
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for nearly 30 years, covers arts and culture. More about Robin Pogrebin
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 14, 2025, Section C, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Outcry Greets Changes at the Kennedy Center. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
See more on: Donald Trump, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, U.S. Politics
The Trump Administration’s First 100 Days
Justice Dept. Showdown: A crisis at the department over the Adams corruption case is an early test of the criminal justice system’s resilience against a retribution-minded president and his appointees.
A Whirlwind Through Europe: The new Trump foreign policy team has brought a dizzying message to European allies on A.I., Ukraine and more. It has already left many angered and chagrined.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: The vaccine skeptic and former presidential candidate who threw his “medical freedom” movement behind President Trump was confirmed as health secretary.
‘The Boss of Everyone and Everything’: Trump is increasingly trying to enforce his will on areas like the arts, sports, news, private companies and college campuses.
Extension for U.S.A.I.D.: For at least another week, a judge will keep a hold on a Trump directive placing more than 2,000 employees on administrative leave and forcing the return of overseas workers.
‘Deregulation by Firings’: Stop-work orders, firings and litigation pauses by the administration have hobbled agencies intended to protect ordinary Americans, consumer advocates say. But business groups have long favored regulatory relief.
