This piece first appeared in our weekly newsletter, Executive Dysfunction.

Hello there—I’m so excited to finally welcome you to Executive Dysfunction, Rewire News Group’s newest weekly newsletter keeping up with all the latest Trump administration news so you don’t have to. You may have already noticed that you’ve been getting an extra email every Friday evening since Donald Trump was inaugurated, and now we’re making it official!

This newsletter will largely look the same: We’ll be bringing you a roundup of the week’s biggest developments in Trump-land, along with some stories I’ve read during the week that helped me understand the news better. And because the news was, frankly, quite stressful long before Trump’s return to office, I’ve gotten pretty good at finding ways to decompress. I’ll share them with you every week, too. Stay with us, y’all—it’ll be an uphill battle for the next few years.

Anti-democratic actions

• After a federal appeals court voted to force Trump to reinstate the heads of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts implemented an administrative stay that allows Trump to fire the two officials for now while the Court deliberates the administration’s appeal.
• On April 4, a federal judge found that the White House violated a court order when it withheld Federal Emergency Management Agency funds from more than a dozen states, the New Republic reported.
• The legal statuses or visas of more than 600 international students have been altered or revoked altogether, the Guardian reported.
• Trump froze $790 million and $1 billion in federal funding to Northwestern University and Cornell University, respectively, which an administration official attributed to Title VI investigations.
• The Supreme Court blocked a lower-court ruling that would have forced the Trump administration to rehire 16,000 federal workers.

DOGE

• Reuters reported that Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” which is not an actual federal agency, is using artificial intelligence to surveil federal employees.
• Musk called senior trade adviser Peter Navarro a “moron” after the two voiced opposing views on Trump’s controversial tariff plans. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed the public spat, saying “boys will be boys.”
• DOGE is beginning to work on how the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures most banks, can “increase efficiency,” the Handbasket reported.
• In a cabinet meeting, Musk said his team will likely cut about $150 billion in “waste and fraud” this year rather than the $1 trillion he promised when he began working for the federal government (though it wasn’t clear whether Musk was claiming DOGE had saved $150 billion so far, or that it is the team’s goal for 2025), the New York Times reported.

Immigration

• The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man the administration mistakenly deported to a detention center in El Salvador. Earlier this week, the Court had paused a lower court judge’s order for the Trump administration to bring Garcia back to the United States by Monday night.
• The Department of Justice flouted a federal judge’s order to provide its plan for returning Garcia to the U.S. The judge ordered the federal government to provide daily updates on its efforts in the case, according to the New York Times.
• After a lower court judge halted deportation flights to El Salvador, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could continue deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, though the Court didn’t determine the constitutionality of the 1700s-era law, the New York Times reported. The Supreme Court also ruled that the administration cannot remove migrants without providing advance notice and allowing them to appeal their deportations.
• A Louisiana judge ruled that the Trump administration can deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student and green-card holder who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month over his involvement in on-campus pro-Palestinian protests.
• The White House plans to spend up to $45 billion to increase its capacity to detain immigrants in the next two years, according to the New York Times.
• Reuters reported that the administration plans to fine migrants it’s deporting up to $998 per day if they don’t leave the U.S.
• The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Homeland Security finalized a deal that allows the IRS to provide taxpayer information about undocumented immigrants to the DHS. IRS Acting Commissioner Melanie Krause resigned over the deal, NBC News reported.
• The Social Security Administration is invalidating thousands of migrants’ Social Security numbers by listing them as dead in an effort to cut them off from financial institutions and force “self-deportation,” the New York Times reported.
• Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba announced that she is investigating New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and the state’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, over the state’s policy limiting local police forces’ ability to work with federal immigration officials, according to the New York Times.

Health and science

• In the midst of a measles outbreak in Texas that has killed two unvaccinated children and one unvaccinated adult in New Mexico so far, funding cuts are weakening local governments’ efforts to vaccinate people, News From The States reported.
• Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he will direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending that local governments should add fluoride to drinking water, according to the Associated Press. Water fluoridation was touted as one of the country’s greatest public health achievements of the 20th century, as fluoride helps strengthen teeth and prevent cavities.
• An Office of Management and Budget proposal would eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientific research arm, the New York Times reported.

LGBTQ+ rights

• The New York Times reported that some of its reporters who include their preferred pronouns in email signatures are having requests for comment denied by Trump administration officials, with Leavitt telling one reporter that “as a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”

DEI and civil rights

• Nearly 400 books were removed from the Naval Academy’s library this week as part of the Trump administration’s DEI purge, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and books covering the Holocaust and racism. The New York Times reported that two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf remain.
• The Air Force Academy will no longer consider the diversity of the class when evaluating applicants, the New York Times reported.

Recommended reading

• To be so honest, I have Googled “what is going on with the tariffs” at least once this week. I barely passed Intro to Microeconomics my freshman year of college, sorry! This NPR article helped me understand Trump’s partial tariff walkback, and what may be coming next.
• It was helpful for me to see that rich Trump voters also have no idea what the hell is going on, courtesy of New York magazine.

Unwind

• Y’all… this was a HUGE week for 15-year-old me, who may or may not have co-run a fan page on an unnamed social media platform for the band 5 Seconds of Summer. Now, my 26-year-old self (who, for the record, is still a 5SOS fan) is pretty thrilled, because the band’s bassist, Calum Hood, just dropped his first solo single, “Don’t Forget You Love Me.” Thanks king!