Politics
Trump chats with Musk in lengthy, overarching interview as Harris continues snubbing media
Trump to be interviewed by Elon Musk tonight
Fox News national correspondent Bryan Llenas reports on the anticipation surrounding former President Trump’s no-holds barred interview with Elon Musk on X on ‘Special Report.’
Former President Donald Trump spoke with tech billionaire Elon Musk in an overarching, lengthy interview Monday evening on X as Vice President Kamala Harris continues avoiding the media since landing on the top of the Democratic ticket for the White House.
“It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview, and in her case, with a very friendly interview. She’s got all friendly interviewers,” Trump said of Harris Monday evening during his roughly two-hour interview with Musk on X Space.
Trump’s comments come as Harris has avoided the media for 22 days. She has snubbed formal press conferences or sit-down interviews, including for a Time magazine cover story, since she emerged as the DNC’s nominee for the White House after President Biden dropped out of the race last month.
“She is considered more liberal, by far, than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical-left lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, very quickly you’re not going to have a country anymore. And she’ll go back to all the things that she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero,” Trump added of Harris.
KAMALA HARRIS DECLINES TIME MAGAZINE INTERVIEW AS SHE CONTINUES TO AVOID THE PRESS
Donald Trump Elon Musk (Getty Images)
Trump’s interview with Musk kicked off after 8:30 p.m. Monday, following a “massive” distributed denial-of-service attack on the platform that caused delays, Musk explained on X. More than 1 million people ultimately listened to the interview according to the live tracker throughout the discussion.
X MELTS DOWN AFTER TRUMP-MUSK’S INTERVIEW ‘SPACE’ IMMEDIATELY CRASHES
The two held a laid back interview, where Musk prompted Trump with topics before the 45th president was offered ample time to elaborate on policy issues such as immigration, the assassination attempt on his life last month, spiraling inflation and closing the Department of Education in favor of states taking the mantle on school systems.
Vice President Kamala Harris says her cursing habit has gotten worse since she entered office. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
“I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states. … Of the 50 [states], I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them, or, you know, 20 of them, will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great,” Trump said, while noting left-wing states such as California could struggle if he does eliminate the DOE.
The 45th president also spoke at length with Musk about the current state of immigration in the U.S.
“I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East,” Trump told Musk, who endorsed Trump earlier this year.
Trump said that despite Harris’ recent rhetoric to address the spiraling migrant crisis at the border, she and Biden have had years to address migration but “won’t do anything.”
“She had three and a half years, and by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent and he’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something, because he’s not too good,” he said.
On the topic of immigration, Trump also credited a slide his campaign made showing immigration stats for saving his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month during a rally, when shooter Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate him. The 45th president looked over to the slide on immigration data when Crooks opened fire, which narrowly saved his life as the position of his head had abruptly changed.
“That slide — illegal immigration saved my life,” he told Musk. “The incredible thing is that the chart, I used it less than 20% of the time. It was just a moment.”
“It’s always to my left, never my right, and it’s always at the end of the speech,” Trump added of the position of the slide.
“I’m going to sleep with that chart always,” he joked.
FBI INVESTIGATING IRAN’S HACK OF TRUMP CAMPAIGN DOCUMENTS
The interview, billed as “a conversation” between X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk and former US President Donald Trump, originally due to start at 1am on Tuesday, finally got underway just after 1.40am. Picture date: Tuesday August 13, 2024. (Photo by PA Wire/PA Images via Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Trump went on to rattle off a list of wars and world events the U.S. could have avoided if Biden were not in the Oval Office, while noting he was tough on nations such as Russia, China and North Korea and knows the countries’ respective leaders “well.”
“First of all, the Israeli attack would have never happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine, and we’d have no inflation, and we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan mess, if you think of it well … if you take a few of those events away, and we have a different world.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a photo prior to their talks on the sidelines of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China, on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. President Putin will make a two-day state visit to China this week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, May 14, 2024. (Sergei Guneyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)
HARRIS CAMPAIGN POSTS DEBUNKED CLAIM THAT TRUMP CALLED CHARLOTTESVILLE NEO-NAZIS ‘VERY FINE PEOPLE’
He pointed to his tweets back in 2017 when he slammed North Korea’s Kim Jong-un as “little rocket man” as tensions heightened between the two nations amid a series of North Korea missile and nuclear tests.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends at a meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang, North Korea on Feb. 28, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
“I had that problem worked out very quickly,” Trump said of North Korea. “It was nasty at the beginning with Rocket Man … [Jong-Un] said he has a red button on his desk. I said, ‘I have a red button on my desk too, but my red button is much bigger, and my red button works.’ And then I called him ‘Little Rocket Man.’”
“Anyway, here’s the bottom line. All of a sudden, I got a call from him, and they said they want to meet, they wanted to meet me. And we met … and I got along with him great. We were in no danger, but President Obama thought we were gonna end up in a war, a nuclear war, with him,” he said.
BURGLARY AT TRUMP CAMPAIGN VIRGINIA HEADQUARTERS CAUGHT ON SURVEILLANCE CAMERA UNDER INVESTIGATION
The Biden administration would support the elimination of taxes on tipped wages, an idea first proposed by former President Trump, the White House said. (Left: (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images), Right: (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images))
Trump also addressed Biden’s exit from the 2024 race, saying it was a Democratic “coup” that pressured Biden to drop out. Biden dropped out of the running last month as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age and Democrats and traditional allies of the party called on him to exit the race.
“This was a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave, and they said, ‘We can do it the nice way, or we can do it the hard way,’” Trump said.
“They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him,” Musk added before Trump slammed Biden as “the worst president in history.”
TRUMP CAMP THANKS WH FOR CONFIRMING THERE’S ‘NO DAYLIGHT’ BETWEEN HARRIS, BIDEN: ‘KAMALA CREATED THIS MESS’
Trump made a return to X, formerly Twitter, earlier on Monday after nearly a year of not posting on his once-favored social media platform. Before X sold to Musk in 2022, Trump was suspended from his Twitter account following the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He seldom posted on the platform after Musk reinstated his account, only sharing his mugshot in August of last year.
Former President Donald Trump told Columbia Journalism Review he had to fight off “unbelievably fake stories” during his presidency. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
“Are you better off now than you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered. Our border has been erased. We’re a nation in decline. Make the American Dream AFFORDABLE again. Make America SAFE again. Make America GREAT Again!” Trump posted earlier Monday amid a flurry of campaign ads.
Ahead of his interview with Trump, Musk hyped the interview as one that “should be highly entertaining!” as it “is unscripted with no limits on subject matter.”
“This country is going down, and these people are bad people that we’re running against. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border, and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they stop crime,” Trump said towards the end of the interview.
“It’s so incredible.”
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is preparing for President Trump to declare a national emergency in order to seize control of this year’s midterm elections from the states, including by bracing his Senate colleagues for a vote in which they would be forced to either co-sign on the power grab or resist it.
In the wake of reporting last week that conservative activists with connections to the White House were circulating such an order, Padilla sent a letter to his Senate colleagues Friday stating that any such order would be “wildly illegal and unconstitutional,” and would no doubt face “extremely strict scrutiny” in the courts.
“Nevertheless, if the President does escalate his unprecedented assault on our democracy by declaring an election-related emergency, I will swiftly introduce a privileged resolution [and] force a vote in the Senate to terminate the fake emergency,” wrote Padilla, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.
Padilla wrote that such an order — which could possibly “include banning mail-in voting, eliminating major voting registration methods, voter purges, and/or new document barriers for registering to vote and voting” — would clearly go beyond Trump’s authority.
“Put simply, no President has the power under the Constitution or any law to take over elections, and no declaration or order can create one out of thin air,” Padilla wrote.
The same day Padilla sent his letter, Trump was asked whether he was considering declaring a national emergency around the midterms. “Who told you that?” he asked — before saying he was not considering such an order.
The White House referred The Times to that exchange when asked Tuesday for comment on Padilla’s letter.
If Trump did declare such an emergency, a “privileged resolution,” as Padilla proposed, would require the full Senate to vote on the record on whether or not to terminate it — forcing any Senate allies of the president to own the policy politically, along with him.
Experts say there is no evidence that U.S. elections are significantly affected or swung by widespread fraud or foreign interference, despite robust efforts by Trump and his allies for years to find it.
Nonetheless, Trump has been emphatic that such fraud is occurring, particularly in blue states such as California that allow for mail-in ballots and do not have strict voter ID laws. He and others in his administration have asserted, again without evidence, that large numbers of noncitizen residents are casting votes and that others are “harvesting” ballots out of the mail and filling them out in bulk.
Soon after taking office, Trump issued an executive order purporting to require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship before registering and barring the counting of mail-in ballots received after election day, but it was largely blocked by the courts.
Trump’s loyalist Justice Department sued red and blue states across the country for their full voter rolls, but those efforts also have largely been blocked, including in California. The FBI also raided an elections office in Georgia that has been the focus of Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Trump is also pushing for the passage of the SAVE Act, a voter ID bill passed by the House, but it has stalled in the Senate.
In recent weeks, Trump has expressed frustration that his demands around voting security have not translated into changes in blue state policies ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, where his shrinking approval could translate into major gains for Democrats.
Last month, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “I have searched the depths of Legal Arguments not yet articulated or vetted on this subject, and will be presenting an irrefutable one in the very near future. There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!”
Then, last week, the Washington Post reported that a draft executive order being circulated by activists with ties to Trump suggests that unproven claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election could be used as a pretext to declare an elections emergency granting Trump sweeping authority to unilaterally institute the changes he wants to see in state-run elections.
Election experts said the Constitution is clear that states control and run elections, not with the executive branch.
Democrats have widely denounced any federal takeover of elections by Trump. And some Republicans have expressed similar concerns, including Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who chairs the Senate rules committee.
In the Wall Street Journal last year, McConnell warned against Trump or any Republican president asserting sweeping authority to control elections, in part because Democrats would then be empowered to claim similar authority if and when they retake power.
McConnell’s office referred The Times to that Journal opinion piece when asked about the circulating emergency order and Padilla’s resolution.
Padilla’s office said his resolution would be introduced in response to an emergency declaration by Trump, but hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.
“Instead of trying to evade accountability at the ballot box,” Padilla wrote, “the President should focus on the needs of Americans struggling to pay for groceries, health care, housing and other everyday needs and put these illegal and unconstitutional election orders in the trash can where they belong.”
Plaintiff Council for Opportunity in Education
Defendant U.S. Department of Education
Filed in the District of Columbia on Oct. 14, 2025
Injunction
Plaintiff Dallas County, Tex.
Defendant Kennedy
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 5, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Defendant Kennedy Jr.
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on July 21, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Colorado
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on April 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Housing Authority of the County of San Diego
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Oct. 15, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Alliance to End Homelessness
Defendant Department of Housing and Urban Development
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Dec. 1, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Washington
Defendant Federal Emergency Management Agency
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on July 16, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Arizona
Defendant Environmental Protection Agency
Filed in the Western District of Washington on Oct. 16, 2025
Plaintiff Open Technology Fund
Defendant Lake
Filed in the District of Columbia on March 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff National Public Radio
Defendant Trump
Filed in the District of Columbia on May 27, 2025
Plaintiff San Francisco Unified School District
Defendant AmeriCorps
Filed in the Northern District of California on March 10, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Filed in the District of Maine on June 17, 2025
Plaintiff Rhode Island Latino Arts
Defendant National Endowment for the Arts
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on March 6, 2025
lost
President Trump has tried to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding to coerce states, punish opponents, remake programs and impose his views. His targets have repeatedly sued to stop him, and the courts have repeatedly rebuked him — only for the president to try again and again.
Take just these seven cases, all of them tied to the administration’s efforts to block funds from “sanctuary” communities, those that restrict cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
Last February, a coalition of cities and counties sued over executive orders directing agencies to shut off such funds.
Plaintiff City and County of San Francisco
Defendant Trump
Filed in the Northern District of California on Feb. 7, 2025
injunction
A judge issued a preliminary injunction, halting those directives while the case proceeded.
The same day, the Department of Transportation told communities they must cooperate with immigration enforcement to get federal transportation dollars.
Twenty states, led by California, soon sued …
Plaintiff California
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost in district court.
The Department of Homeland Security tried to withhold emergency management funds. Another lawsuit followed …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant FEMA
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on May 13, 2025
lost
… and the administration lost.
Then D.H.S. tried reducing counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states instead …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Noem
Filed in the District of Rhode Island on Sept. 29, 2025
lost
… and again, the administration lost.
In the past year, funds for housing, transit, health and public safety have all been conditioned on cooperation with immigration.
Plaintiff King County
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Western District of Washington on May 2, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Fresno
Defendant Turner
Filed in the Northern District of California on Aug. 20, 2025
injunction
Plaintiff Chicago
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Nov. 12, 2025
injunction
Injunctions regularly followed.
These are among 198 lawsuits in the past year identified by The New York Times that challenge how Mr. Trump has leveraged federal funding to carry out his agenda without the consent of Congress. And they reflect one remarkable feature of the campaign: It has proceeded undeterred by losses in court.
With that persistence, the administration has been hammering away at a new kind of reality in Washington, one where the president wields far more control over spending, and where his opponents aren’t entitled to the services of their federal government.
“Anyone in the country who relies on federal dollars is depending on the president to get that money,” said Matthew Lawrence, a law professor at Emory University. “And that’s a new thing.”
The president has threatened money to states that don’t adopt his policies, universities that don’t bend to his will, hospitals that don’t alter their services, school districts that don’t abandon diversity efforts, nonprofits that don’t embrace his gender views, and researchers who study the wrong subjects.
These moves have tested whether Congress, granted the “power of the purse,” still holds the ultimate authority over spending. And they have challenged the courts with a flood of cases — 37 separate suits from the state of California; four from the Association of American Universities on virtually the same question; one from King County, Wash., that has grown to include as plaintiffs 75 communities and agencies.
“You would think there would be some conditioning here: You do an action, you get sued, you lose, maybe you don’t do that action anymore,” said Rob Bonta, who as California’s attorney general has brought many of those suits. “He’s continued to repeat offend. And repeat lose.”
The administration’s approach has amounted to “a game of three-card monte” in the courts, said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan. Each injunction covers the parties suing and the specific programs at issue, but doesn’t necessarily stop the administration from blocking funds to other groups it disfavors. The result, Mr. Bagenstos said: “‘Oh, well, you think I can’t do this thing over there? Well I’m going to do it over here.’”
Presidents have long sought to steer funding to advance their priorities, designing programs with Congress or awarding competitive grants to communities that emphasize certain ideas. But the Trump administration has gone much further: terminating en masse funds that were already awarded; imposing new conditions on future grants that flout federal rule making; and blocking money to whole programs and agencies created by Congress.
The groups that have sued represent a fraction of everyone affected; many have lacked the means or the will to go to court. But these 198 cases, as of the beginning of March, have pried open a public view into the breadth of the administration’s tactics. And one year in, they have produced a lopsided record of rulings.
When plaintiffs have sought immediate relief, district court judges have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions 79 percent of the time, signaling plaintiffs’ likely success on the merits. In the 26 instances where district judges have issued partial or final rulings, the administration lost 23.
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York v. Department of Health and Human Services
Just because a pronouncement comes from the president does not make it true, even if expressed in the form of an executive order, and even then, does not supersede the law.
lost
American Federation of Teachers v. U.S. Department of Education
By leapfrogging important procedural requirements, the government has unwittingly run headfirst into serious constitutional problems.
lost
Michigan v. Noem
None of this appears consistent with Congressional intent or FEMA’s mission.
lost
The administration declined to comment on the record. But a White House official authorized to describe the strategy said the Trump administration is restoring power to the presidency that previous presidents have shied away from, while tapping that power to prevent fraud and steward taxpayer dollars. The groups bringing all these lawsuits, that person said, are the ones using the courts in a hostile campaign to hamstring the president.
The administration has notably walked away from some defeats without appealing them. But it is counting on a better record before appeals court judges, as has been the case more broadly. Among cases it has appealed, appellate courts have reversed or paused orders against the administration in about 40 percent of their rulings, often with judges appointed by Mr. Trump in his favor.
But even when it is losing in court, plaintiffs’ attorneys and legal scholars said, the administration may still find it is winning on its own terms.
‘Undeserving recipients’
Alongside that first sanctuary cities directive, early executive orders outlining the president’s core agenda aimed to end all “diversity, equity and inclusion” in the government, to eradicate “gender ideology,” to reverse the “green new deal,” and to enforce “election integrity.” All of them proposed leveraging federal funds to do it.
These cases show the administration pulling that lever in numerous ways.
It has tried to set conditions with no clear relationship to program goals (like immigration requirements for highway funds). It has threatened funding to force states to share information (voter rolls, food aid lists). It has told grantees they must pledge to comply with orders the president hasn’t issued yet. And it has invoked criminal and financial penalties if they break those pledges.
It has terminated even small sums, targeting with laser precision opponents of the president (who then sued):
The American Bar Association lost $3.2 million in domestic violence training grants after the administration attacked the group.
Plaintiff American Bar Association
Defendant Department of Justice
Filed in the District of Columbia on April 23, 2025
injunction
The American Academy of Pediatrics lost nearly $12 million in grants in apparent retaliation for its advocacy of vaccines and gender-affirming care.
Plaintiff American Academy of Pediatrics
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Columbia on Dec. 24, 2025
injunction
Maine lost access to support for school meals as Gov. Janet Mills was fighting with the president over transgender athletes.
Plaintiff Maine
Defendant Department of Agriculture
Filed in the District of Maine on April 7, 2025
injunction
The government backed down with the American Bar Association and Maine after judges issued initial rulings, only to turn its focus elsewhere.
“You can see that the government’s posture is essentially: Do the thing that’s going to make the White House happy, or get the press release about sticking it to trans people,” said Kevin Love Hubbard, a former D.O.J. attorney who represented the government before leaving in August. Agencies are doing that, he said, “without thinking about then having to go into court.”
Today, he is suing the government in several funding cases with the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island.
Most of these nearly 200 cases are about disfavored categories of recipients like sanctuary jurisdictions, Harvard researchers or organizations serving transgender people.
“We are the undeserving recipients, at least in the mind of our current administration,” said Leesa Manion, the prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., which encompasses Seattle. “The goal all along was to ensure that we — the undesirables — do not get our fair share. Whether it works or doesn’t work, if that’s your overarching goal, you just keep evolving your technique.”
The administration is now increasingly targeting blue states as such a category, too.
That began during the government shutdown last October, when the White House budget director Russell Vought announced the administration would cancel nearly $8 billion in energy projects in 16 states — all where voters had supported Kamala Harris in 2024.
A small group of grantees, including the city of St. Paul, Minn., sued in response.
Plaintiff St. Paul, Minnesota
Defendant Wright
Filed in the District of Columbia on Nov. 10, 2025
lost
In January, the administration lost in district court, where a judge said it had violated the Constitution.
But officials were already preparing other cuts to blue states. H.H.S. froze $10 billion in child care and family assistance funds to five states. The states sued …
Plaintiff New York
Defendant Administration for Children and Families
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Jan. 8, 2026
injunction
… and a judge issued an injunction.
The D.O.T. suspended funding to the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and New York. Both states sued …
Plaintiff New Jersey
Defendant Department of Transportation
Filed in the Southern District of New York on Feb. 3, 2026
injunction
… and secured another injunction.
Even after those setbacks, in early February the administration told Congress it would cut more than $600 million in public health grants to four blue states. They sued …
Plaintiff Illinois
Defendant Vought
Filed in the Northern District of Illinois on Feb. 11, 2026
injunction
… and the next day, a judge issued another injunction in the form of a temporary restraining order.
Still, last week, the administration said it would withhold about $250 million in Medicaid funds from Minnesota (prompting another lawsuit).
These moves, citing a mix of fraud and immigration policies, follow the president’s vow to block all funding to sanctuary jurisdictions — a group, under the D.O.J.’s definition, that could encompass one-third of the U.S. population.
“They can sue us and maybe they’ll win,” the president said in January. “But we’re not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore.”
Arbitrary and capricious
At stake in many cases are weighty constitutional principles: the separation of powers; the right to due process when the government says grantees have done something wrong; the First Amendment protections for organizations to advocate their views without government retaliation.
In the St. Paul suit, a district judge, Amit P. Mehta, ruled in January for the first time in one of these cases that the administration had violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by singling out states for their partisan lean. During the litigation, the government didn’t deny doing that. Rather, it argued it was allowed to.
St. Paul, Minnesota v. Wright
Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024. There is no rational relationship between that classification and defendants’ stated governmental interest.
lost
But that ruling covered only seven canceled grants worth about $27.5 million out of the nearly $8 billion total terminated. Now a coalition of 13 states is suing with the same constitutional argument in a new case about the same cuts.
The constant that is running through most of these cases, however, is the more mundane-sounding Administrative Procedure Act. That 1946 law says that the federal government must be reasoned and document its thinking according to transparent rules — in short, that it shouldn’t be slapdash and secretive.
These cases are full of examples of it doing just that. When the Department of Homeland Security tried last year to reduce counterterrorism grants to sanctuary states, the agency appeared to arrive at the lower award sums by simply lopping digits off the original values.
Illinois v. Noem
Neither a law degree nor a degree in mathematics is required to deduce that no plausible, rational formula could produce this result.
lost
Officials have sent out directives with copy-and-pasted typos, termination letters without agency letterhead and bare explanations with boilerplate rationale.
“You had literally grants for millions of dollars being canceled in a single vague paragraph: ‘This no longer comports with administration priorities, thank you very much,’” said Claudia Polsky, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has led a class-action lawsuit among University of California researchers that has restored, for now, at least a thousand grants worth about a billion dollars.
The administration has given grantees new mandates — and prohibitions — so vague that they haven’t known how to comply.
“‘Promote gender ideology’ — what does that mean?” said Maria Corona, the head of the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which has challenged new conditions on grants. “When you’re talking about ‘violence against women,’ in the language itself we’re already talking about a gender issue.”
Last February, the National Institutes of Health issued a seismic policy change on a Friday night, to take effect the following Monday, slashing payments to universities for research overhead, drawing several lawsuits.
Plaintiff Massachusetts
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Medical Colleges
Defendant National Institutes of Health
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Health and Human Services
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on Feb. 10, 2025
lost
In April, the administration lost these cases, consolidated under one judge (an appeals court upheld the decision this year).
But after the district court ruling, the Department of Energy, followed by the National Science Foundation and then the Department of Defense, each rolled out an identical policy.
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Energy
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on April 14, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant National Science Foundation
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on May 5, 2025
lost
Plaintiff Association of American Universities
Defendant Department of Defense
Filed in the District of Massachusetts on June 16, 2025
lost
As these cases accumulated, so did the judges’ irritation.
Association of American Universities v. Department of Defense
The Court does not write upon a blank slate but instead follows three other courts in this district who have come to similar conclusions with respect to different federal agencies’ attempts to enact virtually identical policies. Notably, defendants ignored these obviously relevant — and at least reasonable — analyses before adopting this policy.
lost
Success for the administration has seldom involved winning on the merits. Rather, the administration has argued in most of these cases that district judges have no business hearing them at all. Cases seeking money, it says, belong instead in the Court of Federal Claims, a specialized court dedicated to financial contract disputes with the government.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett breathed life into that argument, concurring in a preliminary ruling last summer that surprised some legal experts. Her opinion — suggesting policies should be litigated in district court, while payouts resulting from them belong in the Court of Federal Claims — has further complicated these cases. So has the Supreme Court’s ruling last year ending nationwide injunctions.
Winning while losing
By the time grantees have gone to court, they have already lost much. Researchers have halted studies. Nonprofits have laid off staff. The core expectation that the government is a reliable partner has already been undercut.
“The result is a corrosive uncertainty that undermines the basic functioning of government,” said Jacob Leibenluft, a former official in the Biden White House budget office.
That uncertainty sets in the moment money isn’t on time, or when grantees start to think it won’t be in the future. Other changes take root, too: Grantees rethink what’s in their mission statements; professors shift what they teach.
American Association of University Professors v. Trump
Numerous U.C. faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the U.C. system.
injunction
The administration is advancing these changes even when it’s losing particular funding cases in court. And it has successfully blocked money to groups who haven’t sued, further entrenching the president’s expanded power over spending.
Whether this dynamic sticks depends as much on Congress as on the courts. If legislators were more actively guarding programs they had funded themselves, many of these lawsuits likely wouldn’t exist.
New York v. Trump
The interaction of the three co-equal branches of government is an intricate, delicate and sophisticated balance — but it is crucial to our form of constitutional governance. Here, the Executive put itself above Congress.
injunction
In rare cases, Republicans in Congress have pushed back against the administration and been able to reverse billions in cuts far more quickly than courts could, including from after-school programs and mental health and addiction treatment.
For most programs targeted by the administration, however, Republicans have publicly said little, and that’s unlikely to change as the president now targets blue states more explicitly. Republican and Democratic appropriators have together quietly tucked some new guardrails into spending bills this year. But it is Democrats, primarily, who have spoken up for the larger principle that lawmakers set the terms of federal spending — not the president.
“We have to guard that with our lives,” said Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator in the House. The alternative, she said, is that funding becomes a tool to silence dissent. “‘Don’t speak out — or I’ll cancel your grant.’”
Absent bipartisan clamor in Congress, cases like King County v. Turner grind on. The case was brought last May by eight local governments challenging new conditions on housing and transportation grants. Then they added H.H.S. as a defendant. And 23 more local governments and transit and housing agencies joined as plaintiffs. Then another 29 came on board. Then 15 more. Each one has had to explain the harms it has faced. The judge has had to review each claim, alongside the details of dozens of grant programs, while crafting what are now four successive injunctions. All that is just one lawsuit.
“Should we have to do that 200 times, 300 times?” said Erin Overbey, the general counsel with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. “What’s the number where we reach critical mass?”
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AUSTIN, TEXAS – The expensive and contentious battle for the Republican Senate nomination in Texas is headed to a May runoff, after none of the three major candidates in the crowded field of contenders topped 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election.
Longtime incumbent Sen. John Cornyn will face off with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after they finished in the top two in the primary, with Rep. Wesley Hunt in third place, according to unofficial primary election results.
The winner will face off with either progressive firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a vocal critic and foil of President Donald Trump, or rising star state Rep. James Talarcio, who were vying for the Democratic Senate nomination. Both were trying to become the first Democrat in nearly four decades to win a Senate election in right-leaning Texas.
This year’s Senate showdown in Texas is one of a handful across the country that could determine if Republicans hold their majority in the chamber in the midterm elections. The GOP currently controls the chamber 53-47.
The Cornyn campaign and aligned super PACs spent nearly $100 million to run ads attacking Paxton and Hunt, with the senator charging in the closing weeks of the primary campaign that Democrats will flip the seat in the general election if Paxton’s the GOP’s nominee.
Cornyn, his allies, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP, repeatedly pointed to the slew of scandals and legal problems that have battered Paxton over the past decade, as well as his ongoing messy divorce.
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS SENATE PRIMARIES IN TEXAS
“If I’m the nominee, I’ll help President Trump by making sure that we carry the five new congressional seats as well as maintain this Senate seat and will help him continue his agenda through the last two years of his term of office,” Cornyn touted in a Fox News Digital interview on Sunday.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign stop in The Woodlands, Texas, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Annie Mulligan/AP Photo)
And, he argued, “If the Democrats win, because we nominate a flawed candidate with incredible baggage like the attorney general, then that last two years of [Trump’s] agenda is jeopardized, as well as everybody down ballot that we need to continue to elect as Republicans.”
PAXTON DEMANDS STRICTER VETTING AFTER DEADLY TEXAS RAMPAGE
Paxton, a MAGA firebrand who grabbed significant national attention by filing lawsuits against the Obama and Biden administrations, pushed back, telling Fox News Digital on the eve of the primary that “I’m 3-0. I’ve won three statewide races.”
Pointing to public opinion polls suggesting he has the edge over Cornyn, Paxton argued, “it’s really easy for him to say that when he’s losing a primary, because he’s not delivered for the people of Texas, and he’s going to find out tomorrow what that means. He’s going to end up losing.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican Senate candidate, speaks to supporters at a campaign event on primary eve, in Waco, Texas, on March 2, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
“This idea that I can’t win a race is not true… there’s no evidence of what he’s saying is being true. As a matter of fact, the evidence is just the opposite,” Paxton added.
Paxton was boosted a few weeks ago by an endorsement from the political wing of Turning Point USA, the powerful grassroots conservative organization that was long steered by the late Charlie Kirk.
The GOP nomination battle was a two-person race until Hunt, a West Point graduate and military veteran who flew helicopters during his service and who represents a solidly red district in suburban Houston, announced his candidacy last autumn.
“I think there’s going to be a runoff, no matter what happens,” Cornyn predicted on Sunday.
Paxton, speaking to supporters on primary eve, touted that “if we go to a runoff, the odds get better for me,” as he pointed to what will likely be a smaller electorate for the May 26 runoff.
Republican Senate candidate Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas, at a primary eve campaign event, in Houston, Texas on March 2, 2026 (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
Hunt, in a Fox News Digital interview on the eve of the primary, argued that he’s “the best candidate to win the primary and win the general.”
TRUMP’S IRAN STRIKE ROCKS TEXAS SENATE RACE AS DEMS DEMAND ‘WAR POWERS,’ GOP APPLAUDS PRESIDENT
And pointing to the negative ads from Cornyn and his allies that have targeted him the past couple of weeks, Hunt said, “They have spent tens of millions of dollars against me in the state of Texas, which means that I must be doing the right thing, and I must be a threat. DC will not decide who will be the next senator from Texas. Texans will and that’s why I got in this race.”
But Hunt fell short, coming in third place.
Trump, whose clout over the GOP remains immense, stayed neutral to date in the Republican primary. All three candidates, who sought the president’s endorsement, were in attendance Friday as Trump held an event in Corpus Christi, Texas.
“They’re in a little race together,” Trump said of Cornyn and Paxton. “You know that, right? A little bit of a race. It’s going to be an interesting one, right? They’re both great people, too.”
Trump also complimented Hunt, and said that all three contenders were engaged in an “interesting election.”
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in a Whataburger restaurant in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Feb. 27, 2026. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
While Trump stayed neutral, his top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, helped the Cornyn campaign. And veteran Republican strategist Chris LaCivita, who served as co-campaign manager of Trump’s 2024 White House bid, consulted for a top Cornyn-aligned super PAC.
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The big questions going forward as the runoff campaign gets underway are whether Trump will make an endorsement, and whether the major outside groups that supported Cornyn will continue to throw resources into the extended nomination battle.
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