President Trump called Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the U.S., “a Palestinian” during a meeting with the Irish Prime Minister.

Reporter: Are you planning to lower corporate taxes - Well, we are planning to lower taxes. If the Democrats behave, but the Democrats have no clue. The Democrats have to get their act together. And if they don’t vote, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to have taxes that are going to go through the roof. You’re going to have a very bad time. You’re going to have some very bad things happen. And people are going to blame the Democrats. And Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian. O.K.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, warned other countries that they should not retaliate against the tariffs the United States is putting on their exports. He said that some countries, like Britain and Mexico, had thoughtfully examined how they do business with the United States. But for countries that respond with further tariffs, “the president’s going to deal with them with strength and with power,” he said.

“If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy,” Lutnick said of Trump.

Trump threatened to put high tariffs on European wine and alcohol this morning after the European Union put a tariff on American whisky, which came in response to Trump’s tariffs on European steel and aluminum yesterday.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters outside the White House that he is not concerned about the impact of tariffs on the economy and described them as a short-term issue. “What’s not good for the economy is this government shutdown,” Bessent said, blaming Democrats for a looming shutdown that he said would hurt confidence and Americans.

“The fact that the Democrats are in disarray, they’re flailing, and this is the best they can do — I think this is the economic story for the next few days,” Bessent said.

Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, told Democrats this morning that it was “time to fish or cut bait” when it comes to government funding with a shutdown deadline fast approaching. He said the choices were to “decide if they’re going to support funding legislation that came over from the House or if they’re going to shut down the govenment.” Democrats who on Wednesday came out in opposition to the House bill will meet again today to decide their strategy. A key procedural vote is set for Friday ahead of the midnight deadline, when funding runs out.

The Senate health committee voted in favor of advancing the nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes of Health on a party line vote of 12 to 11. The next step will be a vote on the Senate floor. Dr. Bhattacharya, a health economist and professor of medicine at Stanford University, will lead an agency under fire, as the Trump administration cuts billions of dollars in funding that the agency disburses for medical research. The funding was restored under a court order, but the administration found other ways to slow-walk research support.

Dr. Marty Makary, the nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration, was approved in a Senate committee and will be up for a vote by the full chamber. Dr. Makary is a health researcher, author and former cancer surgeon. Staff members at the F.D.A. are waiting to see if he can protect the agency from damaging staff and funding cuts that have wreaked havoc on agencies throughout the government.

Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said he lost confidence in Dr. Makary when he learned that he chose a chief counsel who had argued in favor of the Biden administration stance on the abortion pill, allowing it to be dispensed by mail. Hawley said he regained confidence Thursday when he saw that Hilary Perkins, the newly named F.D.A. chief counsel, had resigned effective immediately.

Stocks ticked down when trading got underway this morning, as trade tensions kept investors on edge. The S&P 500 is about half a percent lower. The pullback this morning comes after a volatile week of trading that pushed the benchmark index near a 10 percent drop from its mid-February high.

Dr. Dave Weldon, who was just withdrawn as the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he learned around 10 p.m. last night from a White House official that he would not have received enough votes from the Senate health committee to advance his nomination.

Dr. Weldon has repeatedly questioned the safety of the measles vaccine, and the nation is currently experiencing multiple measles outbreaks, including one in West Texas and New Mexico that has already claimed two lives. Dr. Weldon said his withdrawal was a “shock” but also somewhat of a relief. “Government jobs demand a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me in it, I’m fine with that,” he said.

The Food and Drug Administration announced in a social media post Thursday that Hilary Perkins, the newly named chief counsel, has resigned effective immediately. Perkins previously worked for the Justice Department civil division, where she defended the Biden administration position on the abortion pill. The pill is shaping up to be a contentious issue for the F.D.A., with Republican lawmakers urging Dr. Marty Makary, the nominee to run the agency, to launch a focused review of its safety.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced her appointment and another lawyer’s on Tuesday as a way to “return the agency to gold-standard science, evidence-based medicine, and recalibrate its trajectory toward public health rather than industry profiteering.” In that announcement, he also said that 10 regional offices for the agency would be reduced to four.

A coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Thursday, two days after the Education Department fired more than 1,300 workers, purging people who administer grants and track student achievement across America.

The group, led by New York’s Letitia James, sued the administration in a Massachusetts federal court, saying that the dismissals were “illegal and unconstitutional.”

“Firing half of the Department of Education’s work force will hurt students throughout New York and the nation, especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding,” Ms. James said in a news release. “This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal.”

The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of the K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction.

“All of President Trump’s executive actions are lawful, constitutional and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said. “Partisan elected officials and judicial activists who seek to legally obstruct President Trump’s agenda are defying the will of 77 million Americans who overwhelmingly re-elected President Trump, and their efforts will fail.”

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has said that the layoffs will help the department deliver services more efficiently and that the changes will not affect student loans, like Pell Grants, or funding for special-needs students.

Thursday’s move was made in concert with the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont and the District of Columbia.

“President Trump is not a king, and he cannot unilaterally decide to close a cabinet agency,” said Matthew J. Platkin, New Jersey’s attorney general.

The suit is the most recent legal challenge to Mr. Trump’s fast-moving agenda. At the core of his goals has been a push to slash jobs, programs and funding across the government. To lead the push, Mr. Trump appointed Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to run a program called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Staffed by Mr. Musk’s young aides, DOGE has bulldozed through federal agencies.

In its 52 days, the Trump administration has dealt crippling blows to several departments, including the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Layoffs have also left thousands of federal workers unemployed and looking for employment in a sluggish job market.

In DOGE’s wake, dozens of lawsuits have been filed, leading to a patchwork of injunctions and court orders opposing many of the cuts. In a separate challenge, Ms. James and a coalition of 19 attorneys general won an injunction banishing DOGE from access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s most sensitive payment and data systems.

The attorneys general argued in their Education Department suit that the executive branch “does not have the legal authority to unilaterally incapacitate or dismantle it without an act of Congress.”

The cuts announced this week would have “devastating effects,” they said. The Education Department serves nearly 18,200 districts and more than 50 million students, attending roughly 98,000 public schools and 32,000 private schools, they said. The department’s funds support programs for special education — both in public and private schools — and students in rural communities.

The move to cut staff members would lead to the “destruction of this critical federal agency that ensures tens of millions of students receive a quality education,” the attorneys general said.

The cuts have been so severe, the suit said, that they have prevented the department from performing duties mandated by the law. Seven regional offices of the department’s Office for Civil Rights have closed entirely, they said.

The civil rights arm of the agency investigates allegations of racial and sex-based discrimination, but a majority of its complaints involve students with disabilities. In New York, the regional civil rights office built up a backlog of discrimination cases after protests erupted on college campuses last year. Its shuttering could leave those cases in limbo.

The government has cast the layoffs at the Education Department, a longtime target of Mr. Trump, as a move to reduce bureaucracy and costs. The cuts would halve the department’s staff.

Ms. McMahon said in a statement that the “reduction in force reflects the Department of Education’s commitment to efficiency, accountability and ensuring that resources are directed where they matter most: to students, parents and teachers.”

Trump administration officials have spoken often of their desire to dismantle the entire department, a plan that would require the approval of Congress and would probably trigger fresh lawsuits.

John B. King, the chancellor of the State University of New York and a former federal education secretary under President Barack Obama, said in a recent television interview that such a move would harm young people.

“It would be terrible,” Mr. King said.

In their filing on Thursday, the attorneys general said the Department of Education was essential and that their states relied on the agency for “an extraordinary array of programs.”

Although Congress has granted the secretary the authority to restructure the agency, she is “not permitted to eliminate or disrupt functions required by statute, nor can she transfer the department’s responsibilities to another agency outside of its statutory authorization,” the suit said.

The court should declare the directive from Mr. Trump to cut the agency unconstitutional, they argued.

The White House has decided to withdraw the nomination of its pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Republican representative, just hours before he was to have appeared at a Senate confirmation hearing, according to a White House official and an administration official. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the decision, did not offer an explanation.

But it became clear to the White House that Dr. Weldon did not have the votes in the full Senate to be confirmed. Dr. Weldon said in an interview that he learned of the decision last night. The decision to withdraw the nomination was first reported by Axios.

France reacted swiftly to President Trump’s threats. Laurent Saint-Martin, the French minister in charge of foreign trade, said the president was “escalating the trade war that he chose to provoke” in a post on social media. “France remains determined to fight back with the European Commission and our partners. We will not give in to threats and will always protect our industries.”

Ulrich Adam, director general of the trade group spiritsEurope, called President Trump’s threat to impose huge tariffs on European alcohol a “shocker,” and said that the industry is getting caught up in the “tension” of the unfolding trade war.

“Our aim is to get spirits out of the middle of these unrelated disputes,” he said.

Jewish and Muslim groups condemned President Trump for calling Senator Chuck Schumer “a Palestinian,” saying that the president used the term as a racial slur.

Mr. Trump made the comments on Wednesday at a meeting in the Oval Office with Micheál Martin, the prime minister of Ireland. A reporter asked Mr. Trump about tax cuts, and Mr. Trump responded by criticizing Democrats and then focused on Mr. Schumer, the minority leader and the highest-ranking elected Jewish official in the United States.

“Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian,” Mr. Trump said. “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”

Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the United States, said that Mr. Trump’s use of the term “Palestinian” as a racial slur was offensive and beneath the dignity of his office.

“It’s a license to dehumanize and oppress the Palestinians and treat them as something below other people,” said Mr. Awad, who is Palestinian. “It’s a greenlight by the president.”

Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said Mr. Trump managed to be both racist and antisemitic at the same time. Saying Mr. Schumer was not Jewish “feeds into a broader narrative the president has tried to advance, which is that there are good Jews and bad Jews,” she said. The good ones are the ones who vote for him, and the bad ones are the vast majority of Jews who do not, she said. His use of “Palestinian” as a slur is part of a broader effort to drive wedges between Jews and Muslims, she added.

Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Mr. Trump’s comments were “abhorrent” and showed why many Jewish voters did not support Mr. Trump. “His rhetoric, agenda, and alignment with right-wing extremists are endangering American Jews,” she wrote on social media.

Mr. Trump’s comments came after Senate Democrats said on Wednesday that they would not back a Republican bill to fund the government through the end of September, raising the chances of a government shutdown at the end of the week.

The office of Mr. Schumer, whose new book on antisemitism in America will be published next month, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump escalated his trade war with the European Union on Thursday, threatening 200 percent tariffs on European wine and champagne that deepened anxiety among businesses and consumers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Mr. Trump’s announcement, in which he called the E.U. “hostile and abusive,” came a day after the bloc’s leaders unveiled plans to retaliate against a batch of U.S. tariffs that took effect this week by imposing 50 percent tariffs on imports of U.S. whiskey and several other American products.

“If this tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200 percent tariff on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products coming out of France and other E.U. represented countries,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Thursday.

The E.U.’s tariff plan came in response to a set of U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum, and other related products that took hold on Wednesday.

The 27-nation bloc explained that it would react to America’s steel and aluminum tariffs in two waves: First, with tariffs as high as 50 percent on U.S. products including Harley-Davidson motorcycles and Kentucky bourbon, which will take effect on April 1; and second, a series of measures in mid-April that would target farm products and industrial goods that are important to Republican districts.

European leaders have made it clear that they would prefer not to enact those measures, and would like to come to an agreement with Mr. Trump instead.

“Tariffs are taxes,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said in a statement on Wednesday. But with little progress toward a deal, E.U. leaders had decided to hit back in politically sensitive product categories, hoping to inflict enough pain to drive Americans to the negotiation table.

European officials had anticipated that Washington might react, and some vowed on Thursday not to cave under that pressure.

“We will not give in to threats,” Laurent Saint-Martin, France’s foreign trade minister, said in a post on X. Mr. Trump “is escalating the trade war he chose to unleash,” he added.

The European Commission, which most directly drives trade policy for the economies in the bloc, did not have an immediate comment on Mr. Trump’s post.

But Olof Gill, a spokesman for the commission, said that the trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic had reached out to his American counterparts after the E.U.’s announcements on Wednesday. Calls were “being prepared,” he said.

This is not the first time the spirits and alcohol industry has been caught in a trans-Atlantic trade war. Less extreme tariffs were placed on liquor and other alcohol during Mr. Trump’s first term, and the industry’s recovery from that hit has been long and grueling.

Back then, the president threatened champagne with tariffs, but did not follow through.

While it is not clear how much it mattered in that case, Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man and head of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury empire, is a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s. He attended the president’s recent inauguration.

Mr. Arnault’s company is home to brands including Dom Pérignon, Krug and Veuve Cliquot.

This time around, a range of alcohol industry executives have been lobbying in Washington, Brussels and other European capitals to be spared — and have expressed alarm that they are once again caught in the crossfire.

Ulrich Adam, director general of the trade group spiritsEurope, called Mr. Trump’s tariff threat on European alcohol a “shocker.” The group aims “to get spirits out of the middle of these unrelated disputes,” he added.

There seems to be little hope of an immediate reprieve. Mr. Trump stressed that the tariffs “will be great for the wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.”

Champagne, technically, is produced only in a specific region in France. About 16 percent of its total exports go to the United States, based on industry data from 2023, making America the largest importer of the sparkling wine.

This is the second time this week that Mr. Trump has threatened to rapidly escalate a trade war against a close ally.

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump threatened to double the tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum after the province of Ontario responded to his previous tariffs by putting a surcharge on electricity it exported to the United States.

Within hours, Ontario had suspended its surcharge, and Mr. Trump also walked back his threats. On Wednesday, he proceeded to tax Canadian steel and aluminum at the same 25 percent rate as other countries.

Governments have varied their responses to Mr. Trump’s tariff threats.

China, the European Union and Canada have quickly answered Mr. Trump’s tariffs with levies of their own, encouraged by their domestic political constituencies to fight back or emboldened by leverage based on the size of their economies.

But governments in Australia, Brazil, Britain, Japan and Mexico have chosen not to retaliate, at least for now, as they seek a deal with Mr. Trump.

Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, warned other countries in an interview on Bloomberg TV Thursday against retaliating against the United States.

“If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy,” Mr. Lutnick said.

Mr. Lutnick said that some countries, like Britain and Mexico, had thoughtfully examined how they do business with the United States. But for countries that respond with further tariffs, “the president’s going to deal with them with strength and with power,” he threatened.

Liz Alderman contributed reporting from Paris.

New claims for U.S. unemployment benefits ticked lower last week, according to data released today by the Labor Department. Claims fell to 220,000, down 2,000 from the previous week, after seasonal adjustments. The scores of federal employees set to be laid off by the Trump administration, spurred by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, does not appear to be reflected in the data yet.

President Trump has threatened to escalate a trade war with the European Union, saying in a post on social media this morning that he could raise tariffs on alcohol from the bloc. If a “nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky” was not removed immediately, “the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump made the threat after the E.U. announced that tariffs on American products would come into effect next month in response to the Trump administration imposing new levies on steel and aluminum imports yesterday.

When President Trump hawked some Teslas at the White House on Tuesday, it evoked a similar scene from Beijing’s main government compound years earlier, when a top Chinese leader was also photographed alongside Elon Musk examining one of the company’s electric vehicles.

In January 2019, China’s No. 2 official at the time, Li Keqiang, met with Mr. Musk in the Hall of Purple Light, a pavilion for foreign dignitaries inside the Communist Party’s leadership compound known as Zhongnanhai. A photograph on a Chinese government website shows Mr. Li peering at a Tesla as Mr. Musk, the company’s chief executive, looks on approvingly.

During that meeting, Mr. Li said that he hoped Mr. Musk could promote the “stability of China-U.S. relations” and offered the billionaire a Chinese green card, according to the state news media outlet CGTN.

It was a sign of how crucial China was to Tesla’s future at the time. Mr. Musk had just broken ground on a Tesla factory in Shanghai, which was granted unusually favorable conditions by the Chinese government and has since become the company’s most important manufacturing facility in the world. Beijing ensured Tesla low-interest loans, overhauled ownership rules so that the company could set up without a local partner and granted changes that Tesla had sought on emissions regulations.

It was the second time that Teslas had been displayed in Zhongnanhai. A year earlier, Mr. Musk had posted a photo of himself standing in front of Teslas in the Hall of Purple Light. He had just met with Wang Qishan, China’s vice president at the time. They had a “profoundly interesting discussion of history, philosophy & luck,” Mr. Musk wrote on social media.

These days, Tesla is struggling in both China, where sales are plunging amid fierce domestic competition, and in the United States, where Mr. Musk’s politics have set off protests and violence at Tesla dealerships and charging stations.

There was at least one major difference between the Beijing and Washington Tesla shows, however. At the White House, Mr. Musk donned a T-shirt and baseball cap. At Zhongnanhai, he wore a suit.

Joy Dong contributed research.

The White House has withdrawn the nomination of its pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Dave Weldon, a Republican former congressman who was to have appeared at a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday morning.

Reached by phone, Dr. Weldon, who learned of the decision last night, said he had been told by a White House official that “they didn’t have the votes to confirm” his nomination.

Dr. Weldon, 71, was scheduled to appear before the Senate health committee on Thursday at 10 a.m., the first time an agency director would have been subject to the confirmation process. The decision to withdraw the nomination was first reported by Axios.

He said he had been excited by the prospect of serving his country again and helping to restore the public’s confidence in the C.D.C. Dr. Weldon has long maintained that the agency has done too little to investigate the safety of childhood vaccines.

He said had also been looking forward to working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new health secretary, on the MAHA, or Make America Healthy Again, agenda to curtail chronic diseases among Americans.

“It is a shock, but, you know, in some ways, it’s relief,” Dr. Weldon said. “Government jobs demand a lot of you, and if God doesn’t want me in it, I’m fine with that.”

The Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions canceled Dr. Weldon’s hearing. But the panel voted to advance to the full Senate two other health nominees, Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Martin Makary to head the Food and Drug Administration.

(The hearing for Dr. Mehmet Oz, the nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is scheduled for Friday.)

Dr. Weldon was perhaps the least known of the men nominated to lead major agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services. But he was the one aligned most closely with Mr. Kennedy.

The two men have been friends for 25 years. The health secretary has cited Dr. Weldon’s criticisms of the C.D.C. along with his own. Mr. Kennedy is “very upset” at the decision to withdraw Dr. Weldon for consideration as C.D.C. director, Dr. Weldon said.

“I’m going to get on an airplane at 11 o’clock and I’m going to go home and I’m going to see patients on Monday,” he said. “I’ll make much more money staying in my medical practice.”

His hearing was set to take place amid significant measles outbreaks in Texas and New Mexico, which have infected more than 250 people and claimed two lives; a flu season that led to record numbers of hospitalizations; and the potential for a bird flu epidemic.

He had repeatedly questioned the safety of the measles vaccine and criticized the C.D.C. for not doing enough to prove that vaccines are safe.

“They never did it the right way,” he said in a statement released on Thursday morning. He also praised the work of discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who first proposed the theory that vaccines cause autism.

“We might be able to do research and figure out why some kids have a bad reaction to the M.M.R.,” Dr. Weldon wrote, despite dozens of studies that have disproved a link. “Clearly, big Pharma didn’t want me in the C.D.C. investigating any of this.”

The former pick to head the C.D.C. issued a statement following the withdrawal of his nomination.

While in Congress, Dr. Weldon pushed to move the vaccine safety office away from C.D.C. control, saying the agency had a conflict of interest because it also purchases and promotes vaccines. He is also a staunch opponent of abortion.

Dr. Weldon served in Congress for 14 years, from 1995 to 2009. His signature legislative accomplishment was the Weldon Amendment, which bars health agencies from discriminating against hospitals or health insurance plans that choose not to provide or pay for abortions.

Like Mr. Kennedy, he had questioned the need to immunize children against hepatitis B, describing it as primarily a sexually transmitted disease afflicting adults.

He also argued that abstinence is the most effective way to curb sexually transmitted infections. Cases have soared in recent years and only began to show signs of a possible downturn in 2023.

In an interview with The New York Times in late November, Dr. Weldon said that he had worked “to get the mercury out of the childhood vaccines.”

The C.D.C. had published a research study showing the mercury had done no harm, “but there were credible accusations that C.D.C. had incorrectly manipulated the data to exonerate themselves,” he said in the statement.

“If confirmed I was planning on going back into the C.D.C. database and quietly investigate this claim.”

Still, he described himself as a supporter of vaccination. Both his adult children are fully immunized, he said in November. As a doctor in coastal Florida, he prescribes thousands of doses of flu and other vaccines to his patients.

“I’ve been described as anti-vaccine,” Dr. Weldon said, but added: “I give shots. I believe in vaccination.”

Apart from a handful of tough questions from the committee’s chair, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, comments from members have largely fallen along partisan lines. Dr. Weldon’s hearing was not expected to be different.

President Trump’s simultaneous trade wars with Canada, Mexico, China and the European Union amount to a huge economic and political gamble: that Americans will endure months or years of economic pain in return for the distant hope of re-industrializing the American heartland.

It is enormously risky. In recent days, Mr. Trump has acknowledged, despite all his confident campaign predictions that “we are going to boom like we have never boomed before,” that the United States may be headed into a recession, fueled by his economic agenda. But in public and private he has been arguing that “a little disturbance” in the economy and the markets is a small price to pay for bringing manufacturing jobs back to America.

His closest political partners are doubling down on the strategy. “President Trump’s economic policies are simple,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on social media on Monday. “If you invest in and create jobs in America, you’ll be rewarded. We’ll lower regulations and reduce taxes. But if you build outside of the United States, you’re on your own.”

The last time Mr. Trump tried something like this, during his first term, it was a failure. In 2018 he put 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum, maintaining that he was protecting America’s national security and that the tariffs would ultimately create more jobs in the United States. Prices jumped, and there was a temporary increase of about 5,000 jobs nationwide. During the pandemic, some of the tariffs were lifted, and today the industry employs roughly the number of Americans it did then.

More worrisome, though, were the raft of studies that followed showing that the country lost tens of thousands of jobs — upward of 75,000, by one study — in the industries that were dependent on steel and aluminum imports. The output per hour for American steel makers had also dropped, while productivity for manufacturing overall in the United States rose.

The experiment Mr. Trump is attempting now is far larger. And the retaliatory tariffs that are being imposed on U.S. manufacturers — with the Europeans aiming at Kentucky bourbon, as well as boats and Harley-Davidson motorcycles made in swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania — are exquisitely designed to cause pain in places where Mr. Trump’s supporters will feel it the most.

“If Trump is serious on what he is saying about sticking with these tariffs, he is betting his presidency on their success, and on the patience of the American people, at a moment when the people do not appear in a patient mood,” said William Galston, a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Mr. Trump is unlikely to be dissuaded. He has argued for tariffs for decades, convinced of their power to end what he contends is an era in which the United States has been bled by its allies and adversaries alike. While many of his top economic aides, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, were never known for advocating broad tariffs in the past, they all know that obeisance to Mr. Trump’s view of geoeconomics is the price of holding a place of power and influence in the administration’s economic club.

“To the extent that another country’s practices harm our own economy and people, the United States will respond,” Mr. Bessent said last week in a speech to the Economic Club of New York. “This is the America First trade policy.”

The reality is that Mr. Trump’s arguments for imposing tariffs are all over the map, as a series of business executives have complained — never on the record — after visiting the White House in recent weeks. Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative from 2013 to 2017 and now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, distills Mr. Trump’s arguments into three categories.

“When the president thinks about tariffs, he is usually thinking about three things: leverage, revenue and re-industrialization,” Mr. Froman said on Wednesday.

“The leverage is working, for now,” he said. Mexico and Canada have come up with plans for reducing the amount of fentanyl crossing the border, even if they are handing Mr. Trump programs that they implemented previously but have repackaged or revived in response to his demands. Oddly, Canada has been hit by some of the hardest tariffs, even though very little of the fentanyl entering the United States comes over the Canadian border. (Canada’s departing prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said last week, “What he wants is to see a total collapse of the Canadian economy, because that’ll make it easier to annex us.”)

But Mr. Froman contends that the White House is already seeing diminishing returns from its strategy. “You can do this once or twice and bring people to the table,” he said, “but at some point the countries say we are going to retaliate,” as Canada and the European Union now have.

Mr. Trump also loves the idea that tariffs bring in revenues. In his Inaugural Address he spoke admiringly of President William McKinley, who pushed for huge tariffs in the 1890s, and he argued that the period was a high point for American economic policy. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” Mr. Trump said on Jan. 20. “For this purpose, we are establishing the External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties and revenues. It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury, coming from foreign sources.”

But again, the facts do not always sort out that way. While the U.S. government brought in more than $60 billion in tariffs from China in Mr. Trump’s first term, it also compensated American farmers who were hit by retaliatory tariffs imposed by Beijing. That cost nearly as much.

The final justification Mr. Trump offers for tariffs is that they will bring jobs back to the United States. It is a concept rooted deep in his psyche and his political history; he expresses little interest in examining empirical studies that may muddy the picture.

Of course, as much as Mr. Trump would like to see all products made in the United States, there is a reason nations trade with one another. Some have a comparative advantage to make certain products. Others are at a different stage of development. And sometimes nations do not want to get stuck producing low-tech products when they could move up the ladder. The towns north of Boston dominated the country’s shoe industry throughout the 1800s; today they are better known for software startups, law firms and some of the nation’s most expensive real estate.

But in Mr. Trump’s worldview, as he himself acknowledged in a 2016 interview, it is traditional manufacturing that matters. The 1950s, he said, were his ideal, when American manufacturing and power reigned supreme.

He is unimpressed when economists attacking his tariff plans point out that car parts may move a dozen times over the border with Canada before final installation in an American-produced vehicle, which will be more expensive because of his tariffs on Canada. Or that sophisticated designs for the most advanced semiconductors will be beamed back and forth to Taiwan Semiconductor, the world’s most successful chip maker, before the chips themselves are produced in Taiwan — even if the intellectual property inherent in the design is American.

One thing Mr. Trump and his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., have in common is a desire to bring that chip making back to the United States. Mr. Biden’s approach was the CHIPs Act, which passed with bipartisan support and designated more than $50 billion in federal funds to jump-start investments in the most advanced chip fabrication plants. The concept actually began in Mr. Trump’s first term, though at the end of his speech to Congress last week, he dismissed it.

“Your CHIPS act is a horrible, horrible thing,” he told lawmakers. “We give hundreds of billions of dollars, and it doesn’t mean a thing. They take our money, and they don’t spend it.”

The solution is tariffs, he has concluded. If the chips themselves are made in the United States, they will be tariff-free.

His problem is one of timing. It takes years to build the most advanced chip facilities. (Intel has just delayed by at least four years one factory that it initially promised would open in Ohio in 2025 or 2026.) And even when they are built, the United States will still be dependent on Taiwan for about 80 percent of its most advanced semiconductors.

It is not clear whether voters will be willing to wait that long for results.

The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it had stopped using the largest U.S. operator of shelters for migrant children over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment of minors at the facilities, and moved to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit that sought to hold the nonprofit accountable for enabling that abuse.

A joint statement issued by the Health and Human Services and Justice Departments on Wednesday cited concerns over allegations detailed in the lawsuit filed last year, namely that employees for the provider, Southwest Key Programs, subjected children to abuse and harassment.

The suit accused employees of Southwest Key, which has worked with the federal government for more than two decades, of exploiting “children’s vulnerabilities, language barriers and distance from family and loved ones” from 2015 through at least 2023, including President Trump’s first term.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, in the statement, blamed the Biden administration’s immigration policies for enabling the abuses.

“Under the border policies of the previous administration, bad actors were incentivized to exploit children and break our laws: this ends now,” Ms. Bondi said, adding, “securing our border and protecting children from abuse are among the most critical missions of the Department of Justice and the Trump administration.”

Anais Biera Miracle, a spokeswoman for Southwest Key, maintained the nonprofit denied the claims of abuse. She said it was “pleased” that the Justice Department had dropped the case in its entirety, and that charges cannot be refiled.

“There is no settlement or payment required,” Ms. Miracle said in an email. “We are glad this matter is now concluded.”

Abuse and harassment were also alleged to have taken place during President Trump’s first term, including during his policy of family separation, which forced thousands of additional minors into federal custody. In a complaint filed in July, federal prosecutors reported that Southwest Key employees subjected minors to threats of violence to prevent them from reporting rape, solicitations of sex and entreaties for nude photographs, among other inappropriate conduct and abuse for at least eight years, across three presidential administrations.

At the time the complaint was filed, the H.H.S., which assumes responsibility for housing children who arrive at the southern border unaccompanied by parents or legal guardians, continued to place minors at shelters run by Southwest Key even as prosecutors asked that the nonprofit face penalties and that it pay damages to the victims.

The decision appears to conclude a gradual reversal of fortune for Southwest Key, which has worked with the federal government for more than two decades, operating more than 25 shelters across Texas, Arizona and California. It has been awarded more than $6 billion in federal funds since 2007. After the H.H.S. announced that it would review its grants to Southwest Key, Ms. Miracle, the spokeswoman, said that the government had frozen funding and put in place a stop placement order on Southwest Key shelters, forcing the nonprofit to furlough about 5,000 employees.

Housing underage migrants for the federal government has been a financial boon for contractors like Southwest Key, whose award money more than doubled during the family separation policy overseen by Mr. Trump in 2017 and 2018. It was one of several providers that cashed in as the administration scrambled to find shelter for more than 5,000 children forced into federal custody, turning the care of migrant children into a billion-dollar business with little transparency.

The New York Times revealed in 2018 that Southwest Key had funneled government money through a web of for-profit companies to convert public funds into private money for the organization and pay top executives millions of dollars. Shortly after, the Justice Department opened an investigation into possible financial improprieties. Southwest Key also began an internal inquiry, and high-level executives, including its founder and chief financial officer, eventually resigned.

The complaint filed by the Justice Department last year disclosed that Southwest Key had documented dozens of cases of abuse reported by children, the majority of whom were 13 to 17 and came from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But Southwest Key’s employees did not report abuse they had observed or knew of, or any violations of policies intended to protect minors.

By one account, a worker who sexually abused three girls ages 5, 8 and 11 threatened to kill their families if they told. In another case documented by Southwest Key, a supervisor deliberately changed shifts to be alone with a teenage girl he repeatedly raped, abused and threatened. At night, he would enter her bedroom and those of others in violation of Southwest Key’s policies. The girl was transferred to a different shelter after she reported the abuse.

At the time, a spokeswoman for Southwest Key said that the complaint did not “present the accurate picture of the care and commitment our employees provide to the youth and children,” and that the company remained focused on “the safety, health and well-being” of the children at its shelters.

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into the funding and management of New York City hotels operating as shelters for migrants, according to a copy of a federal subpoena sent to a Manhattan hotel.

Federal prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Hotel Chandler in Midtown on Wednesday, requesting information related to the migrant shelter program and “a list of full names of aliens currently residing at Hotel Chandler,” including nationality, dates of birth and identification numbers.

The subpoena requested testimony and evidence from the hotel related to “an alleged violation” of federal immigration law. It asked the hotel for the names of entities and individuals responsible for the “funding and management of the illegal immigrant/migrant shelter program,” as well as any contracts or agreements related to it.

It was unclear why prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Chandler, a hotel on East 31st Street that was converted into a homeless shelter years ago but does not operate as a shelter for migrants.

The investigation appears focused at least in part on the management and funding of hotels acting as shelters, but its full scope was unclear as of Wednesday, as was whether other hotels had received subpoenas.

The grand jury subpoena was issued by the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. A spokesman for the office, Nicholas Biase, referred questions to the Department of Justice in Washington. A spokesman there declined to comment on what he said was “an ongoing criminal investigation,” adding that he could not discuss the scope or contours of the inquiry.

New York City, which is housing about 43,000 migrants in shelters across the city, including dozens of converted hotels, had not received a subpoena as of Wednesday, according to an official briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams, declined to comment, saying, “We cannot comment on any type of federal investigation.”

The Guardian first reported on Wednesday that a Manhattan hotel, which they did not name, had received a subpoena.

The city’s migrant shelters have been criticized and scrutinized by the Trump administration, which has made New York City, the country’s largest sanctuary jurisdiction, a target of its immigration crackdown.

The city entered into multimillion-dollar contracts with more than 100 hotels as it struggled to house the more than 230,000 migrants who have arrived in the city seeking shelter since early 2022. Republicans have long decried the use of hotels as shelters to house migrants as wasteful spending of taxpayer funding.

Last month, the Trump administration abruptly clawed back $80 million in federal funds from the city’s bank accounts that was meant to cover some expenses associated with paying hotels to shelter migrants.

In doing so, the federal government singled out the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which the city had converted into its main processing center for migrants. The Trump administration depicted it as a safe haven for migrant gangs. Shortly after, the city announced it would shut down the Roosevelt Hotel by June, citing a sharp decline in the number of migrants arriving in the city.

William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting, and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

The acting head of the government’s human resources arm, Charles Ezell, will no longer testify on Thursday in a case challenging the legality of the recent mass firings of federal workers, lawyers for the Trump administration said.

The move could pave the way for a federal judge to order the government to pause the firings.

Mr. Ezell had been ordered to appear before a San Francisco judge as part of a lawsuit brought against the Office of Personnel Management by unions representing some of the fired workers.

As the office’s acting chief, Mr. Ezell began issuing guidance in January that agencies interpreted as orders to fire federal employees, particularly those with probationary status. That guidance is at the heart of multiple legal challenges, with the once-obscure agency assuming a lead role in President Trump’s government-gutting initiative.

According to a legal complaint from the employee unions, Mr. Ezell held a meeting on Feb. 13 with the heads of many federal agencies in which he ordered them to fire tens of thousands of employees. The next day, O.P.M. provided a template to agencies to use for the termination letters, stating that employees were being fired for performance reasons, according to the plaintiffs.

The unions argued that O.P.M. does not have the authority to make such personnel decisions and asked the court to rule that the office’s orders were illegal and force the government to stop firing people at their direction.

Mr. Ezell filed a declaration on Feb. 26 asserting that he did not order the agencies to fire anyone, and that the memos from his office were intended only as “guidance.” The same day, lawyers for the unions filed examples of correspondence from O.P.M. that they argue show that the memos were indeed orders.

A day later, the judge presiding over the case, William Alsup of the Northern District of California, heard arguments from both sides about O.P.M.’s role in the mass firings at the agencies involved in the lawsuit, including the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Judge Alsup concluded that O.P.M. has no legal authority to order the agencies to fire anyone, ordered that the government retract the memos and said the government should put a stop to unlawful personnel moves. He also scheduled a hearing for Thursday, March 13, making clear he wanted Mr. Ezell to appear.

O.P.M. responded to his order by retracting the original memos, but the government disputed the need for Mr. Ezell’s testimony. Judge Alsup disagreed, ordering on Monday that Mr. Ezell come before the court.

“The problem here is that Acting Director Ezell submitted a sworn declaration in support of defendants’ position, but now refuses to appear to be cross-examined, or to be deposed,” Judge Alsup wrote Monday.

On Tuesday, the government confirmed that Mr. Ezell would not comply. Government lawyers said his testimony is not necessary “because existing documentary evidence and briefing demonstrates that O.P.M. is not directing agencies to terminate probationary employees.”

Since the lawsuit was filed, the unions have drastically expanded its scope, including fired employees from 28 agencies, up from the five in the initial complaint.

The broader scope reflects the extraordinary personnel actions that have been taken since Mr. Trump’s return to office and the opacity surrounding who is responsible for orchestrating the wholesale changes that have been ordered by O.P.M. — Mr. Trump or his government downsizing guru, the tech billionaire Elon Musk.

During his address to a joint session of Congress on March 4, Mr. Trump said Mr. Musk is the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, which is overseeing the culling of the federal government. Two days later, Mr. Trump told members of his cabinet that they are the ones in charge of reducing the number of employees at their agencies, not Mr. Musk.

Yet members of Mr. Musk’s team continue to show up at federal agencies demanding data and documents and operating with outsized importance.

Mr. Ezell’s testimony on Thursday would have given lawyers representing the unions the opportunity to press him on O.P.M.’s role in how Mr. Trump’s government overhaul is being carried out. According to a court filing after the government’s notice informing the judge that Mr. Ezell would not testify, the court clerk said Thursday’s hearing would go on as planned.

Mr. Ezell took over as leader of O.P.M. on Inauguration Day. Before that, he was a lower-level official at the agency, overseeing data analytics. He also previously served as a consultant to the agency, according to his LinkedIn page.

Zach Montague and Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.

President Trump’s retribution campaign against law firms, legal experts and analysts say, is undermining a central tenet of the American legal system — the right to a lawyer to argue vigorously on one’s behalf.

With the stroke of a pen last week, Mr. Trump sought to cripple Perkins Coie, a firm that worked with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, by stripping its lawyers of security clearances needed to represent some clients and limiting the firm’s access to government buildings and officials.

That action came after he revoked security clearances held by any lawyers at the firm Covington & Burling who were helping provide legal advice to Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two federal indictments against Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s actions, and open threats of more to come, have shaken law firms across Washington and beyond, leaving them looking at their client lists and wondering whether their representation could put them in the president’s cross hairs and endanger their business. Perkins Coie has acknowledged that in just the few days since Mr. Trump signed the executive order it “has already lost significant revenue” because of clients who have severed their relationship with the firm.

“This is certainly the biggest affront to the legal profession in my lifetime,” said Samuel W. Buell, who is a longtime professor of law at Duke University and a former federal prosecutor.

A federal judge on Wednesday sided with Perkins Coie in an initial courtroom skirmish with the White House, temporarily barring a major portion of Mr. Trump’s executive order against the firm from taking effect.

“I am sure that many in the profession are watching in horror at what Perkins Coie is going through,” said Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington. She added, “It sends little chills down my spine” to hear arguments that a president can punish individuals and companies like this.

Her reaction mirrored those of other legal experts who said the issues at stake go far beyond whether or not Mr. Trump will make life difficult for elite law firms and well-paid lawyers.

The experts say Mr. Trump’s actions could create a trickle-down effect in which those who find themselves under scrutiny from Mr. Trump and his administration struggle to find lawyers who are willing to defend them in the face of the vast powers of the federal government. Those facing scrutiny could be forced to turn to less skilled lawyers or firms that enjoy access or good ties to the White House, the experts say.

“If you’re a political enemy, you really need the best representation when the government comes after you for who you are,” said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor. “Chilling the lawyers who represent those people hurts the rule of law because when the government can’t be legally opposed, the law provides no protections to anyone and you start to live in an autocracy.”

Mr. Trump’s attack on Big Law comes as his administration has also gone after law schools, the American Bar Association and even lawyers inside the government itself who might question or hinder his agenda.

Last week, the top federal prosecutor in Washington threatened to stop hiring graduates from Georgetown Law School if its dean, William Treanor, failed to abolish the school’s diversity programs. Mr. Treanor all but dared the prosecutor, Ed Martin, to make good on his threats, saying that the First Amendment would forbid them.

Mr. Trump has often relied on pliant lawyers to do his bidding, and last month he fired the three top lawyers in the armed forces who are supposed to advise military leaders on the legality of various policies and operations. The lawyers, known as judge advocates general, were fired without reference to their professional performance, raising concerns that the administration wanted replacements who would be more amenable to Mr. Trump’s orders.

One of the first big tests of this new era arose late last week, setting off maneuvering that shows how big firms in Washington are rushing to adapt to the new challenges they face, according to interviews with people involved in or briefed on those discussions.

In his executive order targeting Perkins Coie, Mr. Trump was going after a firm that represented Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and repeatedly won election law cases in 2020 against Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Trump singled out Perkins Coie’s involvement in a dossier complied during the 2016 campaign by a former British spy about Mr. Trump’s potential ties to Russia.

Amid concerns in the legal community about a chilling effect, few, if any, major firms issued statements condemning Mr. Trump’s action. And amid that silence there was a question about whether any firm would take the even bigger step of agreeing to represent Perkins Coie in its effort to challenge Mr. Trump’s executive order in court.

Perkins Coie reached out to Derek L. Shaffer, a lawyer at the firm Quinn Emanuel. Mr. Shaffer had a long history of bringing civil actions against federal and state governments, and had argued before the Supreme Court three times. Perkins Coie wanted to see if he could take on the firm as a client and quickly go to court to file a suit against the Trump administration to stop the executive order.

Convincing Mr. Shaffer to take the case would come with a major potential bonus: close links to Mr. Trump and his allies.

Lawyers at Quinn Emanuel represent Elon Musk and provide ethics advice to the Trump Organization. The firm has also represented Mayor Eric Adams of New York as the Trump Justice Department has moved swiftly to drop corruption charges against Mr. Adams, a Democrat.

But Perkins Coie was rebuffed. Quinn Emanuel decided against taking the case. Its top leaders concluded that this was not an issue they wanted to jump into at this stage as they continue to build themselves into a power center in Mr. Trump’s Washington.

Other major law firms expressed concerns that if they represented Perkins Coie, they, too, could face Mr. Trump’s ire. Leaders of top firms asked: How would their own clients react if Mr. Trump cut off their access to the government?

In response, the elite Washington firm Williams and Connolly decided it would take on Perkins Coie as a client.

It’s unclear why Williams and Connolly was willing to take a risk that other firms were not. But lawyers at Williams and Connolly have long taken pride in their role as an adversary and check against the government, including by highlighting the firm’s role in protecting high-profile defendants against prosecutorial misconduct. The firm was founded by the well-known defense lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who built his career on vigorously representing an array of clients before the government, including those out of political favor.

On Tuesday, Williams and Connolly, on behalf of Perkins Coie, filed suit against the Trump administration in Washington. That suit led to Judge Howell’s ruling on Wednesday imposing a temporary restraining order to block for now the section of Mr. Trump’s executive order that essentially barred Perkins Coie from dealing with federal officials and prevented it from entering government buildings. She said the executive order was most likely unconstitutional.

Other law firms have been discussing whether to file a joint amicus brief on behalf of Perkins Coie. While some major firms have signaled they are willing to sign onto it, others have said they are reluctant. On Wednesday, 21 state attorneys general filed their own amicus brief supporting Perkins Coie.

Covington & Burling, which had the security clearance stripped from a lawyer at the firm who was assisting Mr. Smith, has taken a different approach from that of Perkins Coie.

Covington has declined to fight Mr. Trump in court. Instead, the firm, concerned about a perception among its clients that it was falling out of favor with Mr. Trump, has begun discussions with other prominent law firms with fewer ties to Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies about becoming the face of some of their most important cases before the Justice Department.

But beyond what Mr. Trump has done to law firms, the political appointees he has placed at departments, agencies and commissions are taking on the legal profession in other ways.

One of Mr. Trump’s political appointees has ordered government officials under him to not renew their memberships to the American Bar Association, hold a position with the association or attend its events.

At the Justice Department, the attorney general has sent a letter to the American Bar Association questioning its diversity practices.

And last week, at an annual conference on white-collar crime for the association, a slew of top officials from the Justice Department — who regularly attend the event — canceled at the last minute. That meant that a conference designed to bring together the industry about an important topic was devoid of senior department officials in charge of enforcing the law.

Abbie VanSickle and Alan Feuer contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this story referred imprecisely to an element of the executive order President Trump issued about the law firm Covington & Burling. The order stripped security clearances from any lawyers at the firm who assisted the former special counsel Jack Smith. It did not strip security clearances from the firm.