Highlights: Judge Orders Trump Administration to Seek Return of Man Sent to Mexico (2025)

A judge orders Trump officials to seek the return of a Guatemalan man to the U.S.

The ruling, by Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court in Boston, criticized the government for first claiming that O.C.G. had said he was not afraid of being sent to Mexico, where he said he was raped and held captive, but later admitting that it was “unable to identify” the officials to whom he had supposedly made that statement.

Judge Murphy also found that O.C.G. was likely to “succeed in showing that his removal lacked any semblance of due process.”

The decision added another flashpoint to the high-stakes battle over President Trump’s deportation policies playing out across the federal courts. A string of judges has faulted the administration for a lack of adequate due process or otherwise carrying out deportations in ways that exceed the president’s authority. Mr. Trump and his aides, in turn, have questioned the authority of courts to hear such cases and even called for the impeachment of judges who rule against them.

Perhaps the case closest to O.C.G.’s is that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a mistakenly deported Maryland man. It raises questions about the likelihood of O.C.G.’s return to the United States, despite Judge Murphy’s order. In both cases, a federal judge has instructed the Trump administration to correct its own admitted mistake and seek the men’s return. Mr. Abrego Garcia remains in a prison in El Salvador.

A member of the legal team representing O.C.G. said she was “thrilled” by the ruling and optimistic about the chances that the government would bring her client back to the United States.

“The government has facilitated returns in numerous cases,” Trina Realmuto, the lawyer, said in an emailed statement. “The process is straightforward.”

Guatemala’s minister of foreign affairs, Carlos Martínez, said Saturday that he was aware of the court order. He added that officials from his office were trying to locate the man.

In Mr. Abrego Garcia’s case, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s order for the government to “facilitate” his return but stopped short of endorsing the judge’s call to “effectuate” it. The government has seized on that distinction, saying it lacks the authority to return Mr. Abrego Garcia because El Salvador maintains custody over him. Mr. Trump himself has said he “could” arrange his release with a phone call.

Judge Murphy took pains to acknowledge this distinction and the constitutional limitations on the judiciary’s ability to direct the conduct of the executive branch overseas. But the word “facilitate,” he wrote, “should carry less baggage” in O.C.G.’s case because he “is not held by any foreign government.”

The judge also ordered the government to investigate and report in more detail on how it had come to claim that O.C.G. did not fear being deported to Mexico, after a Department of Homeland Security official said the statement was based on data from a software tool called the ENFORCE Alien Removal Module. “It really is a big deal to lie to a court under oath,” Judge Murphy said at a hearing on Wednesday.

The claim that O.C.G. did not fear deportation was not the government’s only mistake in the case. Another government filing, which was quickly retracted, mistakenly revealed O.C.G.’s full name, which “further exacerbates the risk of persecution,” his lawyers asserted to the court. Judge Murphy called that error a “bell that perhaps cannot be unrung given the permanent nature of the internet.”

In his declarations, O.C.G. recounted leaving Guatemala for the United States in March 2024, being arrested and sent back, and then trying again. The second time, he said, he was kidnapped and raped by a group of men who released him only after his sister sent them money.

After he reached the United States in May 2024, an immigration judge assured him that he would not be sent back to Mexico without additional due process. Nevertheless, Judge Murphy found, U.S. immigration authorities put O.C.G. on a bus to Mexico, where he was given a choice to be detained for months or return to Guatemala. He chose to go to his home country.

He lives alone, in a house owned by his sister. He avoids going outside and rarely sees his family members. “Anything could happen to me in the street,” he told the court. “I am constantly afraid.”

O.C.G. is one of four pseudonymous plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit that seeks to limit the Trump administration’s ability to deport immigrants without giving them an opportunity to contest their removal on the grounds that they might be at risk of persecution or torture. That opportunity is required by an international treaty to which the United States is a party.

Lawyers for the class are also seeking the return of eight men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, who apparently arrived at an American base in Djibouti on Wednesday and are believed to have been held there since. The administration had sought to deport them to South Sudan, which is on the brink of civil war, but Judge Murphy ordered the U.S. government to retain custody of them for now. Little is known about the conditions that the men are being held in.

The White House has called the men “monsters” and Judge Murphy, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. last year, a “far-left activist judge.”

On Wednesday afternoon, after a chaotic remote hearing and after a daylong proceeding in court, Judge Murphy ordered the government to make arrangements for the men to be able to contact their lawyers by phone.

As of midday Saturday, that had not happened, according to Ms. Realmuto, one of the lawyers who brought the suit. The government did file a new declaration late Friday, from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acknowledging that the flight carrying the eight men had used facilities at “the only U.S. base on the African continent.”

Mr. Rubio expressed concerns that Judge Murphy’s orders could strain diplomatic relations with both Libya and Djibouti, as well as his desire to “maintain effective foreign policy engagements in the region without judicial interference.”

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The U.S. sues four New Jersey cities over their ‘sanctuary’ policies.

“While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the lawsuit says. “And where inaction crosses into obstruction, local governments break federal law.”

The suit was filed a day after a judge dismissed federal trespassing charges that had been filed against Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark this month after his arrest outside a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where people were protesting.

Mr. Baraka said at a hearing last week that he had been “targeted” for selective enforcement. He was named as a defendant in the suit filed on Thursday, as were Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, Mayor Andre Sayegh of Paterson and Mayor Ravi Bhalla of Hoboken. All are Democrats; Mr. Fulop and Mr. Baraka are candidates in the Democratic primary for governor.

Mr. Fulop said he had learned of the lawsuit from a post on the social media app X.

“I think it’s a political sideshow,” he said. “It’s a stunt.”

Mr. Sayegh echoed that sentiment.

“This is a frivolous lawsuit and a flagrant affront to the rule of law,” he said. “We will not be intimidated, and we will fight this egregious attempt to score political points at Paterson’s expense.”

About a dozen states and hundreds of U.S. cities consider themselves “sanctuaries” for undocumented immigrants, but there is no universal definition for what qualifies as such a jurisdiction.

The term “sanctuary” typically refers to governments that put some limits on how far they will go in cooperating with federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to eliminate such policies as part of its broader immigration crackdown. Referring to the New Jersey suit, Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff, wrote in a social media post on Friday that “sanctuary cities are antithetical to law and order.”

He added: “Sanctuary policies aren’t activism and aren’t humanitarianism. They’re obstruction, and they end now.”

The suit against the New Jersey cities and their mayors follows similar litigation filed this month against Colorado and Denver. That suit, which includes Gov. Jared Polis and Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver, both Democrats, as defendants, challenges state and city laws that restrict or prohibit cooperation with federal agencies.

The Justice Department has also sued Illinois, Chicago, their leaders, Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, also Democrats, and Rochester, N.Y., over the same issues.

Earlier this week, the Justice Department charged Representative LaMonica McIver, Democrat of Newark, with assaulting two federal agents as they arrested Mr. Baraka outside the detention center.

Ms. McIver disputes the government’s description of the events at the center.

“It’s political intimidation, and I’m looking forward to my day in court,” Ms. McIver told reporters on Tuesday in Washington.

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The National Security Council will be cut by half.

Rather than build decisions from the ground up incorporating an array of sources and offering a significant menu of different viewpoints, the changes are likely to help Mr. Trump conduct foreign policy debates in his preferred style, with advisers taking the president’s desired outcomes and finding a way to comply with them.

Some National Security Council officials from other agencies are returning to their original offices, and others are being placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, said the person with knowledge of the move, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Some of the teams on the council that focus on specific regions or issues will be gutted, while others will be collapsed and folded into others. Still other teams will cease to exist.

Andy Baker, Vice President JD Vance’s national security adviser, will serve as the deputy for the reconfigured council, alongside Robert Gabriel, whose current title is assistant to the president for policy.

The changes were reported earlier by Axios. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The council has a core staff of presidential appointees supported by dozens of specialists who are detailed — or essentially on loan — from other departments and agencies across the government. Presidents have used the council in different ways, but it has had a central role in foreign policy events since its creation in 1947.

Mr. Trump’s allies have long argued that the council had grown too large over time.

Mr. Trump has also held a deep distrust for and suspicion of the council since the earliest days of his first term, in 2017. People who have worked for him over time say he believes it was the source of significant undermining of his policy views.

Mr. Trump’s first impeachment involved testimony before Congress from Alexander S. Vindman, the council’s director of European affairs, who said the president pressed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, for an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family. At the time, Mr. Biden was one of Mr. Trump’s chief potential rivals in the 2020 election.

In early April, Mr. Trump fired several N.S.C. aides after a meeting with the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who presented him with a list of people she suspected of disloyalty.

Eric Trump starts a nonprofit to build his father’s presidential library.

In the filing, the foundation said it intends to operate as a tax-exempt nonprofit, like the foundations set up to build libraries for other recent presidents. The Internal Revenue Service must grant tax-exempt status, however, and the approval process can take weeks or months.

The foundation’s trustees include Eric Trump, Mr. Boulos — who is married to Mr. Trump’s daughter Tiffany — and James Kiley, a Long Island attorney who has represented Mr. Trump in New York. The president has not said where he intends to locate his library, but his team has reportedly scouted universities in Florida. The foundation’s address, at least for now, is at a Trump golf course in Jupiter, Fla.

This is the second nonprofit set up in Florida to raise money for Mr. Trump’s presidential library. The first, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, was incorporated in late December. It is still listed as active by the state of Florida, but it has not been granted tax exemption by the I.R.S. Mr. Kiley did not immediately respond to an email asking why there were two.

Though Mr. Trump’s library nonprofit is new, it may soon have millions in the bank.

ABC News and Meta agreed to make a total of $37 million in donations to Mr. Trump’s library, to settle lawsuits that Mr. Trump filed against them before he was re-elected. In ABC News’s case, the legal settlement indicates that the money will held in escrow until Mr. Trump’s group is granted tax exemption by the I.R.S.

A spokesman for Meta declined to say if its settlement has a similar provision.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also said he would like the 747 aircraft that Qatar donated to serve as Air Force One to be turned over to his library after he leaves office. There is a precedent for that: Ronald Reagan’s presidential library includes an old Air Force One as an exhibit for tourists to visit.

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In March, after a string of similar orders that openly detailed the president’s political grievances and furthered his campaign of retribution, Mr. Trump released an order targeting Jenner & Block, citing its past decision to hire Andrew Weissmann after the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Weissman left the firm in 2021.

The order leveraged the full force of the federal government to curtail Jenner & Block’s business.

In an opinion on Friday, Judge John D. Bates wrote that the orders were “doubly violative of the Constitution.” Not only did they violate the First Amendment by seeking to muzzle a perceived critic of the president, he wrote, they also had the effect of intimidating all other lawyers whose work “protects against governmental viewpoint becoming government-imposed orthodoxy.”

“This case arises from one of a series of executive orders targeting law firms that, in one way or another, did not bow to the current presidential administration’s political orthodoxy,” he wrote. “Like the others in the series, this order — which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block — makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed.”

The order had directed federal agencies to identify and cancel contracts with the firm, suspend security clearances held by its lawyers and bar its staff from federal buildings, all in the name of “national security and other interests of the United States.”

Around the same time that Mr. Trump began releasing the orders, a cluster of other top firms rushed to pre-emptively head off retaliation by offering millions of dollars of pro bono work on areas of common ground, where they said the values of the firm and the White House appeared to align.

Between white shoe firms such as Paul Weiss, Skadden, and half a dozen others, the White House secured pledges approaching $1 billion worth of free work.

But a minority of firms, including Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey and WilmerHale, went in the opposite direction and sued to stop the orders, arguing that they were clearly coercive. In court, lawyers pointed out that the moment other firms cut deals, the grave national security concerns cited in the executive orders abruptly vanished.

With Judge Bates’s order on Friday, federal judges have so far agreed.

Permanently barring the government from enforcing the order, Judge Bates noted that the larger legal profession now faced a “forward-looking censorship scheme,” in which the threat of punishment could be trotted out repeatedly, any time any firm appeared to be resisting Mr. Trump’s political agenda.

“The administration has shown a repeated willingness to haggle, sending the message loud and clear that Jenner can spare itself — if it compromises its speech,” Judge Bates wrote. “So whereas retaliation usually punishes once and moves along, the retaliation here is ongoing and avoidable.”

Last week, Jenner & Block’s lawyers notified the court that despite the lawsuit challenging the terms of the executive order, several of its lawyers had since received letters informing them that their security clearances were being suspended anyway.

At the same time, firms that reached a deal have seen the scope of their agreements broaden, as Mr. Trump has reportedly mused about deploying those firms toward political causes such as renegotiating trade deals.

While Jenner & Block had asked Judge Bates to go beyond striking down the executive order and also block any future actions that could arise from the president’s attacks, Judge Bates declined to do so.

Noting that he was “very sympathetic” and even found it plausible that the government would retaliate again given its continual hounding of the firm during the litigation, he wrote that it was beyond the court’s power to halt “hypothetical future actions,” even if they were likely unconstitutional follow-up attacks.

The Supreme Court shields DOGE, for now, from having to turn over internal records.

Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the Federal District Court in Washington had ordered that Mr. Musk and his team turn over documents by June 3 and allow the deposition of the administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency by June 13. Those next steps in the lawsuit will now be on hold while the justices consider the matter.

In an emergency application filed on Wednesday with the Supreme Court, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, asked the justices to immediately block Judge Cooper’s ruling, which also involved White House Office of Management and Budget records. Mr. Sauer argued that the judge had overstepped his authority.

In the application, Mr. Sauer said that Mr. Musk’s group was a presidential advisory body, not a federal agency, and was therefore exempt from the federal Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. He argued that the lower court order “clearly violates the separation of powers” by subjecting a presidential advisory group to a request for records, “threatening the confidentiality and candor of its advice.”

The application is the second time the justices have been asked to weigh in on cases related to Mr. Musk’s group. Earlier in the month, the government asked the Supreme Court to let members of DOGE gain access to sensitive records belonging to the Social Security Administration. The justices have yet to issue an order in that case.

The case involving DOGE’s compliance with public records laws stems from a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, a watchdog group that has filed a series of requests seeking information about Mr. Musk’s team.

In February, CREW sued Mr. Musk and others connected with DOGE, arguing that they had violated federal public records laws by failing to process and release the records.

After the trial court judge concluded that Mr. Musk’s team was likely an agency subject to federal public records law, a three-judge federal appeals panel agreed, and the administration then asked the justices to step in and block the trial court’s order.

In a response filed Friday with the justices, lawyers for CREW argued that the Supreme Court “rarely intervenes in ongoing discovery disputes, and it appears that it has never done so in the FOIA context.” They added: “There is no basis for such extraordinary intervention here.”

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Top Paul Weiss partners leave to start a new firm in the wake of its deal with President Trump.

Ms. Dunn is a prominent Democratic lawyer, having overseen debate preparation for former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during their presidential campaigns. She has also been a key partner at Paul Weiss, representing Alphabet, Apple, Uber and Amazon.

Ms. Rhee served as a top prosecutor in Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation and oversaw the firm’s Washington office.

Mr. Isaacson is considered one of the country’s top antitrust lawyers. Ms. Phillips clerked for Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. of the Supreme Court.

“We were disappointed not to be able to tell each of you personally and individually the news that we have decided to leave Paul, Weiss to start a new law firm,” the lawyers said in an email to the firm late Friday afternoon.

Two other prominent lawyers at Paul Weiss — Jeh Johnson, a former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Steven Banks, the leader of the firm’s pro bono practice — also announced recently that they were departing.

Since the firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, reached the deal with Mr. Trump in March, Paul Weiss has been widely criticized by its own associates, lawyers at other firms and Democrats for capitulating to the president. After Paul Weiss, eight other firms made similar deals.

Shortly after Mr. Trump signed an executive order that limited Paul Weiss lawyers’ ability to enter courthouses and represent their clients, Mr. Karp flew to Washington, went to the Oval Office and cut a deal with Mr. Trump.

The deal shocked many in the legal and political world because Mr. Karp has been a major fund-raiser for Democrats and he worked to rally major law firms in “a call to arms” to oppose Mr. Trump during his first term.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Karp said: “We are grateful to Bill, Jeannie, Jessica and Karen for their many contributions to the firm. We wish them well in their future endeavors.”

Ms. Dunn was supportive of the decision to strike a deal with Mr. Trump and was part of the firm’s leadership team that worked with Mr. Karp in getting other partners’ support, two people briefed on the matter said.

Ms. Dunn, aided by Ms. Rhee and Mr. Isaacson, led Google’s trial defense last year in a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit over its advertising technology business. The judge overseeing the case ruled last month that Google had illegally monopolized parts of the industry, but dismissed a section of the government’s case.

This month, after Paul Weiss reached the deal with the Trump administration, Ms. Dunn and Ms. Rhee represented the company in court as the judge began the process of determining how to address the monopoly identified by her ruling.

A spokesman for Google declined to comment.

The partners leaving the firm did not address Paul Weiss’s deal with Mr. Trump in their email to their former colleagues.

“It has been an honor to work alongside such talented lawyers and to call so many of you our friends,” the lawyers wrote. “We hope to continue to collaborate with all of you in the years to come and are incredibly grateful for your warm and generous partnership.”

David McCabe contributed reporting.

Trump says U.S. Steel will form a ‘partnership’ with Nippon Steel.

No terms of the deal were included in Mr. Trump’s statement, nor was there an explanation for the number of new jobs he projected. U.S. Steel currently employs 22,000 people, about 14,000 of them in North America.

Nippon Steel had sought to acquire U.S. Steel for $14 billion, but the Biden administration formally blocked the deal in January on national security grounds. The potential deal, and the idea that a Japanese company would acquire a U.S. industrial giant, became an issue in last year’s presidential campaign and, at times, threatened to complicate U.S. trade relations with Japan.

Mr. Trump said in February that, while he opposed Nippon Steel’s outright acquisition of U.S. Steel, he found the prospect of an investment “very exciting.”

Mr. Trump had said last year that U.S. Steel needed to remain American owned and operated, and it was not immediately clear whether the arrangement announced Friday would maintain that pledge. His post seemed to suggest an investment by Nippon Steel rather than an outright acquisition, though the ownership structure of the deal was not clear.

Investors in U.S. Steel cheered the plan: Shares of the company jumped more than 21 percent on Friday after the news and closed at about $52. Nippon Steel had offered to buy U.S. Steel for $55 a share in cash in the proposal the Biden administration blocked.

A spokesperson for the White House declined to comment beyond Mr. Trump’s post.

A spokeswoman for Nippon Steel said the company “applauds President Trump for his bold action to approve our partnership with U.S. Steel.” She added that the “partnership” was “a game changer — for U.S. Steel and all of its stakeholders, including the American steel industry, and the broader American manufacturing base.”

A spokesman for U.S. Steel said: “U.S. Steel will remain American, and we will grow bigger and stronger through a partnership with Nippon Steel that brings massive investment, new technologies and thousands of jobs over the next four years.”

Nippon Steel has long maintained that it would be interested only in an acquisition that made U.S. Steel a wholly owned subsidiary. Nippon Steel has said that as part of the $14 billion investment it offered in December 2023, it would share steel-making technologies with U.S. Steel but only if it held a majority stake in the company.

Nippon Steel is taking the White House’s announcement as a positive sign, but details of a deal will have to be hammered out with U.S. officials. The company’s executives expect that the process could drag on, especially if Trump administration officials define a partnership as something different from an outright acquisition.

Mr. Trump made the announcement after a meeting with a delegation of leaders from Pennsylvania, including Senator Dave McCormick.

The United Steelworkers union has been adamantly opposed to a deal, arguing that American jobs would not be secure under Nippon Steel.

“We cannot speculate about the impact of today’s announcement without more information,” David McCall, the union president, said Friday. “Our concern remains that Nippon, a foreign corporation with a long and proven track record of violating our trade laws, will further erode domestic steel-making capacity and jeopardize thousands of good union jobs.”

Kim Ward, a high-ranking Republican state senator in Pennsylvania, applauded the news, posting on social media that the deal would “position the American steel industry to dominate the global marketplace through innovation.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said he was also supportive of the deal, which he had discussed with Mr. Trump in recent days.

Mr. Trump said in his post that U.S. Steel would keep its headquarters in Pittsburgh.

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Trump orders faster approvals for new nuclear power plants.

Another order directs the Energy and Defense departments to explore siting reactors on federal lands and military bases, possibly alongside new data centers. That could allow the agencies to bypass the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and develop their own, faster processes for approving reactors.

The Trump administration also set a goal of quadrupling the size of the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants, from nearly 100 gigawatts of electric capacity today to 400 gigawatts by 2050. One gigawatt is enough to power nearly 1 million homes.

“This is a huge day for the nuclear industry,” said Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, as he stood behind Mr. Trump at a signing ceremony in the Oval Office. “Mark this day on your calendar. This is going to turn the clock back on over 50 years of overregulation.”

In one of his first acts in office, Mr. Trump declared a “national energy emergency,” saying the country did not have enough electricity to meet its growing needs, particularly for data centers that run artificial intelligence. While most of Mr. Trump’s actions have focused on boosting coal, oil and natural gas, administration officials have supported nuclear power, too.

Nuclear power enjoys bipartisan backing in Congress. While some Democrats remain opposed because of concerns about safety and disposal of nuclear waste, an increasing number have embraced the technology because it doesn’t produce planet-warming emissions. It also gets backing from Republicans who say nuclear power plants strengthen U.S. energy security.

The far-reaching domestic policy bill passed by House Republicans this week aimed to halt federal support for most types of emissions-free power. But the nuclear industry got an exemption: Companies aiming to build new reactors would still be able to get a tax break as long as they begin construction by the end of 2028.

Even so, developing new reactors in the United States has proved enormously difficult.

While the country has the world’s largest fleet of nuclear power plants, only three new reactors have come online since 1996. Many utilities have been scared off by the cost: The two most recent reactors built at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia totaled $35 billion, double the initial estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule.

In recent years, more than a dozen companies have begun developing a new generation of smaller reactors a fraction of the size of those at Vogtle. The hope is that these reactors would have a lower upfront price tag, making them a less risky investment for utilities. They might also be based on a design that could be repeated often, as opposed to custom-built, to reduce costs.

So far, however, none of these next-generation plants have been built, although projects are underway in Wyoming, Texas and Tennessee.

Some nuclear proponents and companies have blamed the sluggish pace on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must approve new designs before they are built. Critics say that many of the regulations that the agency uses were designed for an earlier era and are no longer appropriate for advanced reactors that are designed to be less susceptible to meltdowns.

“This is an agency that needs be shaken up a bit,” said Jacob DeWitte, chief executive of Oklo Inc., a startup that has developed a small advanced reactor that it plans to build at Idaho National Laboratory. He called the executive orders “incredibly exciting on multiple fronts.”

In one executive order, Mr. Trump directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to undertake a “wholesale revision” of its rules within 18 months and reorganize itself in consultation with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the group formed by Elon Musk. That reorganization could include layoffs, the order said.

While Congress established the nuclear agency to be independent from the White House, Mr. Trump has sought to exert greater authority over independent agencies in recent months.

“The N.R.C. is assessing the executive orders and will comply with White House directives,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “We look forward to continuing to work with the administration, DOE and DOD on future nuclear programs.”

Skeptics of nuclear power fear that pressure from the White House could cause the agency to take shortcuts on safety. Since the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979, in which there were no fatalities, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ratcheted up safety requirements. While that has made it harder to build new plants, the country has also not experienced another major nuclear accident.

“Simply put, the U.S. nuclear industry will fail if safety is not made a priority,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the industry. He added that if another large radiological release were to occur, it would “destroy public trust in nuclear power and cause other nations to reject U.S. nuclear technology for decades to come.”

Even a few nuclear companies and proponents have been nervous about a major shake-up at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They note that the agency has already started streamlining its approval processes in response to bipartisan bills passed by Congress, and that a hasty reorganization could, paradoxically, end up delaying approvals for the nuclear companies that are in the process of getting permits.

“Our assessment is that N.R.C. is already making significant progress on reform,” said Judi Greenwald, executive director of the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, a pronuclear think tank. “It is in everyone’s interest that this progress continue and not be undermined by staffing cuts or upended by conflicting directives.”

Another order calls on the secretary of energy to develop a plan to rebuild U.S. supplies of enriched uranium and other nuclear fuels, which in recent years have largely been imported from Russia.

But speeding up regulatory approvals won’t be sufficient to revive the nuclear industry, some experts said. The first few reactors that do get built are likely to be enormously expensive, and some sort of government support would likely be required to help companies build reactors at a pace that could drive down costs.

To that end, one of the executive orders directs the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office, which currently has roughly $400 billion in lending authority, to make resources available for restarting shuttered nuclear plants and building new reactors. The order sets a goal of having 10 large reactors under construction by 2030.

Yet the loan office has lost more than half its staff this year after a wave of Trump administration layoffs and buyouts, and House Republicans have proposed cutting its budget. Those cuts could hobble a key program for financing new reactors. nuclear supporters have said.

“It’s good to see the focus on building a series of proven large reactors as well as smaller newer designs,” said Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group that supports nuclear power. “But you need serious government financial support to make any of this happen, and get to commercial scale and lower costs. To support the administration’s goals, Congress needs to boost support instead of gutting it.”

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G.O.P. lawmakers and agriculture groups question the health report’s findings.

Representative Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania and Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, both Republicans, released a statement on Friday saying, “We are troubled by the initial findings of the MAHA commission assessment and their impact on America’s farmers and ranchers.”

The two lawmakers stressed it was “imperative” that the commission adhere to the “risk-based and scientific processes set forth by Congress,” which include prioritizing sound science, peer-reviewed research and securing buy-in from the agriculture industry.

There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the White House or the Department of Health and Human Services.

The statement marked the first public sign of friction between Republican lawmakers and Mr. Kennedy. President Trump has instructed the health secretary to “go wild on health” as he tried to overhaul the American food and health industries in alignment with his sometimes unconventional views on medicine and nutrition.

Melissa Furlong, an epidemiologist who studies environmental contaminants at the University of Arizona, said the preliminary data linking the two pesticides to chronic health problems was troubling enough to justify more investigation. “The science is not a slam dunk for either of these pesticides,” she said, “but there is enough preliminary evidence to suggest that we should probably be putting more resources into studying them.”

While the commission’s report stopped short of calling the chemicals “unsafe,” the suggestion that they were linked to adverse health outcomes was enough to infuriate industry groups representing farmers and producers.

In a lengthy statement issued Thursday, the American Soybean Association criticized the report as “brazenly unscientific,” “misleading” and full of “glaring misinformation and anti-farmer findings.” The group also complained it had been blindsided because Mr. Kennedy had reassured Senator Cindy Hyde Smith, Republican of Mississippi, at a hearing earlier this week that “not a single word” in the report should “worry the American farmer.”

Alan Meadows, the soybean association’s director, said in a statement that activists had already filed a number of lawsuits he considers baseless and aimed at stopping the use of pesticides. By arbitrarily singling out the two herbicides, he said, “the administration has offered activists a gift on a silver platter.”

The Corn Refiners Association, which represents manufacturers of products such as high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch and corn oil, said that the report “sows mistrust and unfounded fear” in the country’s food supply. The group said that the commission had given farmers and agricultural companies little opportunity to present their views.

“The American people were promised a process of radical transparency and stakeholder engagement,” the corn refiners said in a statement Thursday. “In the development of this important report, transparency and stakeholder engagement did not happen at all.”

Some agriculture trade groups expressed alarm that the report also targeted refined seed oils, including those made from corn and soybeans. The report called seed oils nutrient poor and suggested, without providing evidence, that they contributed to “inflammation” in the human body. It recommended using animal-based fats like lard, tallow and butter instead.

“Significant research conducted over decades shows that plant-based oils are low in saturated fats and can improve health outcomes,” the soybean association said. The group cited a March study from the Journal of the American Medical Association that found frequent consumption of plant-based oils led to reduced rates of cancer, heart disease and other illnesses as compared to alternatives that are high in saturated fat.

The agricultural groups warned that, should the administration restrict or ban the use of seed oils, it would shrink the domestic market for soybeans, corn and other oilseeds at a time when those products are being hit with retaliatory tariffs in China and other countries because of the president’s trade war.

Mr. Trump and his allies have been clear that they don’t mind taking on powerful agriculture, food and drug lobbyists, who have traditionally backed Republicans. At an event announcing the commission’s findings, one of Mr. Trump’s domestic policy advisers, Vince Haley, applauded the president’s view that there were “no sacred cows” when it came to improving children’s health.

“We are showing the courage to turn over every stone to figure out, to investigate, what is behind the chronic childhood disease crisis,” Mr. Haley said.

Knvul Sheikh contributed reporting.