Trump Administration Live Updates: Labor Secretary Steps Down Amid Misconduct Investigation 23%
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien0% Lily Boyce0% Ashley Cai0% Megan Mineiro0% Tony Romm0% Katie Robertson0% Devlin Barrett0% Colby Smith0% Ann E. Marimow0% Ana Swanson0% Eric Schmitt0%
4/20/2026, 11:59:32 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 40 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Anecdotal, and Pessimism Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 16% saturation with 928 hits. Analysis detected 5,463 faulty-reasoning hits from 5,814 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 36% and a BS Rank of 23% (13,075 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 77.80% of the article peer group.
Trump Administration Live Updates: Labor Secretary Steps Down Amid Misconduct Investigation
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, will step down from her post to take a job in the private sector, according to a White House spokesman.
What We’re Covering Today
Labor Department: Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Trump’s embattled labor secretary, stepped down on Monday as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her.
An internal investigation into her leadership was reviewing allegations of widespread misconduct, including the use of department resources for personal trips and having an affair with a member of her security team.
Read more ›
Fed Chair: Kevin M.
Warsh, President Trump’s pick for Federal Reserve chair, plans to tell the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that the central bank must employ “analytic rigor” and “meaningful deliberation” in setting rates.
Mr.
Trump has frequently criticized the central bank and the current chair, Jerome H.
Powell, for not cutting interest rates more quickly.
Read more ›
F.B.I.
Director Sues: Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, filed a $250 million defamation suit against The Atlantic on Monday over an article that claimed excessive drinking and unexplained absences were jeopardizing his job.
A spokeswoman for the publication said The Atlantic stood by its reporting and would defend itself and its journalists against a suit it called “meritless.”
Read more ›
Labor Department
Lori Chavez-DeRemer was facing multiple scandals and a misconduct investigation.
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Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer has been accused of having an affair with a member of her security team and using department resources for personal trips.
Credit...
Al Drago for The New York Times
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, President Trump’s embattled labor secretary, stepped down on Monday as multiple scandals and investigations closed in on her.
“Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer will be leaving the Administration to take a position in the private sector,” Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, posted on social media .
He said Keith Sonderling, the deputy secretary of labor, would serve as acting secretary.
Pressure on Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer had mounted in recent weeks , as investigators and congressional leaders homed in on questions about her conduct in office, and that of her aides and members of her family.
The Labor Department’s inspector general’s office is nearing the end of a monthslong investigation into a whistle-blower’s allegations of professional misconduct by Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides.
The claims include that she was having an affair with a member of her security team and used department resources for personal trips.
Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer was expected to be interviewed in the matter in the coming days.
Investigators spoke with several dozen witnesses and uncovered evidence that Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer and her staff abused federal spending limits on personal trips, several people familiar with the investigation said, including on fancy hotels, S.U.V. rentals and meals.
Four people have left or been forced out of their jobs in connection with the investigation.
Investigators had also reviewed text messages sent to young staff members by Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer, her former deputy chief of staff, her husband and her father.
The messages, reported last week by The New York Times, suggested that the secretary was drinking during the workday and raised questions about professionalism with her staff.
Nick Oberheiden, a lawyer representing Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer in the internal investigation, said on Monday said she “did not resign because she violated the law; no such finding exists.”
“Her resignation,” he continued, “is much more a reflection of her commitment to the overall mission: to avoid further distractions within the U.S.
Department of Labor.”
The likelihood that the inspector general’s investigation would reveal embarrassing details was compounded by a parallel inquiry on Capitol Hill: Senator Charles E.
Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee, demanded internal records and statements from the department in connection with the allegations.
And Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer’s husband, Dr.
Shawn DeRemer, has been barred from the department’s headquarters, after female staff members accused him of making unwanted sexual advances, including filing a police report.
Although police and prosecutors have said they would not bring criminal charges against him, the situation continued to reverberate in the secretary’s office.
In recent weeks, three claims of a hostile work environment were filed against Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer with the department’s civil rights office.
Mr.
Sonderling, a labor lawyer with a decade of government experience, has been effectively leading the Labor Department during Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure, multiple employees told The Times.
Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer, 58, a one-term former Republican congresswoman from Oregon, was nominated to the secretary position with backing from the Teamsters union, whose president, Sean O’Brien, supported Mr.
Trump’s 2024 run.
Mr.
Cheung, the White House spokesman, said on Monday that Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer had “done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives.”
But her leadership left many Labor Department employees frustrated and demoralized, including career staff and political appointees.
In interviews with The Times, dozens described a toxic workplace characterized by an absentee secretary and hostile aides.
The inspector general’s investigation was touched off by an internal complaint, first reported in January by The New York Post, that Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer was having an affair with subordinate and that she and her top aides regularly concocted official trips to destinations where Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer could socialize and see family.
The evidence gathered in the inspector general’s investigation, along with the related police report and civil rights complaints, painted a picture of an executive office in which younger female staff members often fielded inappropriate requests and messages from Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer, her family and her close aides.
Young women in the executive office were also instructed to “pay attention” to the secretary’s husband and father, people familiar with the matter said.
In one 2025 text message exchange reviewed by The Times, a female staff member apologized Dr.
DeRemer for not being in touch, and promised to check in.
“You better,” Dr.
DeRemer, an anesthesiologist, responded.
“I was feeling forgotten.
I figured you were still in church repenting after your exposure to the demon state of Oregon.”
In another exchange, Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer asked a staff member to bring her a bottle of “josh Sauvi B,” a reference to white wine, to her hotel room from the hotel bar while they were on a work trip.
Many in the department — and in Washington more broadly — sensed that her days as secretary were numbered, with the specter of potentially embarrassing details emerging in an investigative report.
Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation was reported earlier on Monday by Notus .
On Monday, senators arriving on Capitol Hill for the first vote of the week responded to the news of her departure.
“The secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning, and I think she read the room,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said senators, who will vote to confirm her replacement, needed to do a better job vetting Trump administration nominees.
“I think what we have to do is anywhere where benefit of the doubt was given in the past, you’ve got to doubt,” he said.
Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer led the department during a period in which the labor market weakened but proved surprisingly resilient.
Job growth has slowed to a crawl in recent months, wage growth has slowed and the unemployment rate has ticked up gradually.
Younger workers, in particular, have struggled to gain a foothold in the labor market, and Americans have become increasingly concerned about the threat that artificial intelligence could pose to their career prospects.
Yet layoffs across the economy remain historically low, and many economists say weak hiring has more to do with a lack of supply — in part because of Mr.
Trump’s crackdown on immigration — than a lack of demand from employers.
Economists describe the labor market with words like “stagnant” and “anemic,” but not necessarily weak.
Ben Casselman and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting
Four Cabinet and other senior officials have now stepped down from Trump’s Cabinet.
With Ms.
Chavez-DeRemer stepping down on Monday, four senior officials have left Mr.
Trump’s cabinet in his second term.
The rate of turnover is still nowhere near his first term .
Update from Megan Mineiro
Senators arriving on Capitol Hill for the first vote of the week are learning from reporters that the labor secretary stepped down .
“The secretary demonstrated a lot of wisdom in resigning.
And I think she read the room,” said Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana.
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said he believed it was “because the allegations are true,” and added that senators, who will need to confirm her replacement, need to do a better jump of vetting Trump administration nominees.
“I think what we have to do is anywhere where benefit the doubt was given in the past, you’ve got to doubt,” Tillis said.
Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the Republican chairman of the committee with oversight authority over the Labor Department, said public reports of misconduct by Chavez-DeRemer had “raised concern,” but that he hadn’t spoken with her about the allegations .
Update from Tony Romm
Chavez-DeRemer’s departure comes as the agency’s inspector general investigates a series of civil rights complaints inside the Labor Department, as well as texts among the secretary’s friends and staff.
Steven Cheung, a White House spokesman, praised Chavez-DeRemer as he announced her departure on social media.
“She has done a phenomenal job in her role by protecting American workers, enacting fair labor practices, and helping Americans gain additional skills to improve their lives,” Cheung said.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Labor secretary, will step down from her post to take a job in the private sector, a White House spokesman announced on social media.
The F.B.I. director accused The Atlantic of publishing ‘obviously fabricated allegations.’
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Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, sued The Atlantic.
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Kenny Holston/The New York Times
The F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, sued The Atlantic on Monday, accusing it of defamation over an article that claimed his excessive drinking and unexplained absences were putting his job in jeopardy.
The article , under the headline “The FBI Director Is MIA,” was published on Friday and detailed Mr.
Patel’s behavior in his role leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation, citing more than two dozen anonymous sources.
The author, Sarah Fitzpatrick, wrote that Mr.
Patel’s conduct had “often alarmed officials at the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice.”
The article said he “has also earned a reputation for acting impulsively during high-stakes investigations.”
Mr.
Patel denied the claims in a statement to The Atlantic, which the article included.
The White House also denied the claims, with Karoline Leavitt, its press secretary, telling The Atlantic that “Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration’s law and order team.”
Mr.
Patel immediately began threatening a lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia against both The Atlantic and Ms.
Fitzpatrick.
The suit seeks $250 million in damages.
A spokeswoman for The Atlantic said on Monday that the publication stood by its reporting.
“We will vigorously defend The Atlantic and our journalists against this meritless lawsuit,” she said in a statement.
In his complaint, Mr.
Patel accused the defendants of “publishing an article replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”
He pushed back on allegations that he “drinks to the point of obvious intoxication” at places like the members-only clubs Ned’s in Washington and the Poodle Room in Las Vegas.
“Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments or anywhere else, and this has not, and has never been, a source of concern across the government,” the complaint said.
Mr.
Patel also said in the suit that The Atlantic had published the article “despite being expressly warned, hours before publication, that the central allegations were categorically false.”
He said in his suit that the F.B.I. had been given less than two hours to comment on a list of 19 claims provided by The Atlantic, and that his legal counsel had sent the publication a letter refuting the claims, asking for more time to respond and demanding that the article not be published.
Mr.
Patel, as a public figure, must meet a higher standard than an ordinary citizen to prove his case.
He must show not only that there were falsehoods in the article but also “actual malice” — a legal standard that means that the defendants published defamatory material either while knowing it was false or with reckless disregard as to its truth.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series from the Trump administration against media outlets over unfavorable reporting.
Last week, a federal judge dismissed President Trump’s complaint against The Wall Street Journal over a birthday message to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, though Mr.
Trump may refile that suit.
The president has also filed lawsuits in recent months against The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and The Des Moines Register.
Update from Devlin Barrett
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against the District of Columbia for a major pipe collapse that caused 200 million gallons of untreated sewage to flow into the Potomac River.
The federal suit charges that local officials failed to properly maintain its sewer system before the failure in January and February.
Trump’s pick to lead the Fed is set to testify before a Senate committee on Tuesday.
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Kevin M.
Warsh is President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve.
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Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters
Kevin M.
Warsh is set to tell lawmakers on Tuesday that the Federal Reserve’s independence in setting interest rates is “essential,” even as he concedes that the president should have more sway in other policy decisions made by the institution he hopes to soon lead.
In opening remarks to be delivered to the Senate Banking Committee, President Trump’s pick to become the next chair of the central bank will say that its policymakers must make decisions based on “analytic rigor, meaningful deliberation and unclouded decision-making.”
In his opening remarks, Mr.
Warsh did not dissuade elected officials, including the president, from stating their views on interest rates, as Mr.
Trump has repeatedly done.
Instead, Mr.
Warsh will say that central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”
Mr.
Warsh’s testimony in front of the Senate Banking Committee will be a milestone in his bid to succeed Jerome H.
Powell, whose term as Fed chair ends on May 15.
But his ability to get Senate confirmation by then is far from guaranteed amid concerns about the administration’s attempts to encroach on the Fed’s independence.
Mr.
Trump wants significantly lower interest rates and has repeatedly attacked Mr.
Powell and other officials at the Fed for not delivering them.
As part of his pressure campaign, the president has sought to fire Lisa D.
Cook, a member of the board of governors.
Her lawsuit seeking to block her ouster is being considered by the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department has also opened a criminal investigation into Mr.
Powell and his handling of costly renovations at the central bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, has vowed to block any Fed nominee from advancing to a full vote by the upper chamber until those legal threats end.
Mr.
Warsh is not planning to mention the investigation or recent attacks from the president in his opening remarks.
Instead, he will make clear that he will not be sanguine about inflation, suggesting that he will not comply with Mr.
Trump’s demands for lower rates if the economic circumstances do not call for it.
“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will say.
Mr.
Warsh will argue that the Fed’s independence is “earned — and better policy decisions crafted — by steering clear of distractions.”
“Fed independence is placed at greatest risk when it strays into fiscal and social policies where it has neither authority nor expertise,” he will say.
“The Fed should not act as some general-purpose agency of the U.S. government or as an appellate court for matters that are rightly debated and decided elsewhere.”
His comments will echo years of criticism he has directed at the central bank since his five-year tenure as a governor ended in 2011.
While auditioning for the job, Mr.
Warsh, who has deep ties on Wall Street, called for “regime change” at the central bank and said “the credibility deficit lies with the incumbents that are at the Fed, in my view.”
He has previously faulted the Fed for engaging in “mission creep” and focusing on issues outside of its remit of low, stable inflation and a healthy labor market.
He has also taken aim at the central bank’s balance sheet, which has swelled as the Fed has bought up government bonds over the years during financial crises.
The central bank has in recent years shrunk the balance sheet by about $3 trillion from its peak of nearly $9 trillion after the pandemic, but it still remains far larger than Mr.
Warsh would like.
“In the period after the crisis, I also witnessed an institution that was tempted to play a larger role in the economy and society, to extend its reach and stretch its hard-earned credibility, often with the best intentions, to the very edge of, if not beyond, the Fed’s statutory responsibilities,” he will tell lawmakers.
Mr.
Warsh does not believe that all of the Fed’s responsibilities are subject to the same degree of independence, however, a point he is preparing to make on Tuesday.
Fed officials, he will say, are “not entitled to the same special deference in their stewardship of public monies, or in bank regulatory and supervisory policy, or in areas affecting international finance, among other matters.”
The Fed has already embraced much of the administration’s views about loosening the reins on Wall Street, including reducing capital requirements on large and regional banks in hopes that trimming red tape will encourage more lending.
Further changes are very likely once Mr.
Warsh is confirmed.
Justices to hear case on Catholic preschools that reject children of gay parents.
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The Archdiocese of Denver campus in 2023.
The archdiocese asked the Supreme Court to reconsider a First Amendment precedent unpopular with conservative Christians.
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Thomas Peipert/Associated Press
The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether Catholic preschools in Colorado that decline to enroll 4-year-olds with gay or transgender parents can participate in a publicly funded state program.
Two Catholic parish preschools in the Denver area said admitting such children would require them to violate their religious convictions.
A Colorado program pays for families to send their children to the preschool of their choice, public or private, including faith-based programs.
But the state refused to grant an exception to its anti-discrimination rules to allow the preschools to participate.
The church then sued.
Lower court judges sided with the state.
The case, which the court is expected to hear once its next term begins in October, is the latest clash between anti-discrimination principles and claims of conscience from religious groups.
So far, those groups have overwhelmingly prevailed before the current Supreme Court.
In 2018, the court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
In 2021, the court ruled unanimously that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who apply to take in foster children.
In the latest case, the Archdiocese of Denver and two Catholic parishes asked the court to reconsider a precedent limiting First Amendment protections for religious practices.
The precedent, Employment Division v.
Smith , decided in 1990, holds that neutral laws that apply equally to all people cannot be challenged on the grounds that they violate the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion.
That decision, arising from a case involving the use of peyote in Native American religious ceremonies, is unpopular among many conservative Christians, who say it does not offer adequate protection to religion.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A.
Alito Jr. and Neil M.
Gorsuch have all signaled that they are open to reconsidering it.
At issue in the Colorado case, St.
Mary Catholic Parish v.
Roy, is the state’s universal preschool program, adopted by voters in 2020.
The program requires participating schools to sign a nondiscrimination agreement to ensure that all families have an “equal opportunity” to enroll, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, income level or disability.
The Catholic organizations said the requirement violated their First Amendment rights because it prevented religious entities from obtaining state benefits that were generally available.
The state, they said, had granted exemptions from that requirement by allowing certain schools to admit only low-income families or children with disabilities, but excluded Catholic preschools from the program because they admitted only families who followed Catholic teachings, including on sex and gender.
Colorado’s exclusion of Catholic preschools “reduces access, pushing parents and children toward preschools that share the government’s views on these issues and penalizing the religious schools and families who disagree,” the schools’ lawyers from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told the justices in asking them to review the case.
Attorney General Phil Weiser of Colorado, a Democrat, said faith-based providers have the flexibility to create their own curriculum but that no publicly funded preschool “can turn away children and families” based on their status.
“This ensures that all Colorado parents — including Catholic parents and same-sex parents — know their children will not be excluded, because of their protected-class status, from the publicly funded preschool that best meets their families’ needs,” the state’s filing said.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a lower-court decision siding with the state and finding that Colorado’s exclusion of the Catholic schools was not “on the explicit basis” of religion and that the program does not permit any exceptions from its equal-opportunity requirements.
The appeals court said the nondiscrimination requirement “applies to all preschools regardless of whether they are religious or secular.”
And it was unpersuaded that placements reserved for children with disabilities or certain low-income students were exceptions to the discrimination policy.
In general, the appeals court said, Colorado officials “did not exclude faith-based preschools from participating” — and were not attempting to prohibit taxpayer funds from being used for religious purposes.
Richard Garnett, a Notre Dame Law School professor and director of the law school’s Program on Church, State and Society, said the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty did not permit governments to penalize religious schools, or the parents who chose them, by excluding them from education-funding programs.
Colorado has tried to evade recent Supreme Court rulings, he said in a statement, “by imposing requirements that religious schools abandon various policies that reflect their religious character.”
The Trump administration begins accepting requests for refunds of $166 billion in tariffs.
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President Trump opposed tariff refunds until the Court of International Trade intervened in March and ordered the government to return the money to importers.
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Kenny Holston/The New York Times
When President Trump unveiled his sprawling global tariffs last spring, he boasted that they would generate windfall profits and “make America wealthy again.”
But after suffering a significant Supreme Court defeat , Mr.
Trump is about to pay the money back.
The Trump administration on Monday took its first steps toward returning more than $166 billion collected from tariffs that were struck down in February.
Just over a year after imposing many of the duties, the government began accepting requests for refunds, surrendering its prized source of revenue — plus interest.
For some U.S. businesses, the highly anticipated refunds could be substantial, offering critical if belated financial relief.
Tariffs are taxes on imports, so the president’s trade policies have served as a great burden for companies that rely on foreign goods.
Many have had to choose whether to absorb the duties, cut other costs or pass on the expenses to consumers.
By Monday morning, those companies could begin submitting documentation to the government to recover what they paid in illegal tariffs.
In a sign of the expected demand, more than 3,000 businesses, including FedEx and Costco, had already sued the Trump administration in a bid to secure their refunds before the application website launched, with some cases filed even predating the Supreme Court’s ruling.
But only the entities that officially paid the tariffs are eligible to recover that money.
That means that the fuller universe of people affected by Mr.
Trump’s policies — including millions of Americans who paid higher prices for the products they bought — are not able to apply for direct relief.
The extent to which consumers realize any gain hinges on whether businesses share the proceeds, something that few have publicly committed to do.
Some have started to band together in class-action lawsuits in the hopes of receiving a payout.
Many business owners said they weren’t sure how easy the tariff refund process would be, particularly given Mr.
Trump’s stated opposition to returning the money.
The administration has suggested that it may be months before companies see any money.
Adding to the uncertainty, the White House has declined to say if it might still try to return to court in a bid to halt some or all of the refunds.
Melkon Khosrovian, the co-founder of Greenbar Distillery in Los Angeles, prepared for the refund process by readying documents and registering on the new government refund portal.
Mr.
Trump’s duties had been a “nightmare” for his distillery, he said, which requires foreign-grown ingredients like vanilla, nutmeg, juniper berries, coffee, tea and hibiscus.
Mr.
Khosrovian, a participant in We Pay the Tariffs, a coalition of small businesses that have opposed the president’s policies, admitted he didn’t have high hopes that he would see a refund anytime soon.
His company had paid nearly $100,000 in tariffs that are now deemed illegal.
“We’re thinking we might get it back, we might not get it back,” he said.
“It feels like a very opaque process.”
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More than 3,000 businesses, including Costco, sued the federal government in a bid to secure tariff refunds.
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Johnny Milano for The New York Times
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, which manages the tariff refund process, declined to make officials available for an interview.
At the heart of the matter is the ever-changing slate of so-called reciprocal tariffs that Mr.
Trump imposed last year using the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.
No president before him had ever used the 1977 law to apply tariffs, prompting the Supreme Court to rule against Mr.
Trump in February.
The decision ended Mr.
Trump’s most nimble and potent trade power , which he had used for a vast array of purposes — from fighting illegal drugs to protecting political allies abroad.
While the government has lost trade cases in the past — and has been forced to refund money as a result — the repayment process now awaiting Mr.
Trump is unlike any in recent history.
By the administration’s own count , there were more than 330,000 importers by March that had paid IEEPA duties on more than 53 million entries.
The government estimates that it amassed more than $166 billion in revenue from those taxes on imports.
That outstanding balance is expected to accrue roughly an additional $650 million in interest each month, or about $22 million per day, according to Scott Lincicome, the vice president for general economics at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
The fiscal stakes alone prompted Mr.
Trump to assert throughout the legal battle that a loss could tip the government into a “GREAT DEPRESSION!,” a claim that economists widely rejected.
Once the Supreme Court ruled against him, his administration then tried to slow the process until the Court of International Trade intervened in March and ordered the government to return the money to importers.
The trade court’s order appeared to set off a scramble among federal customs officials to put together a digital process for handling a crush of requests, according to legal filings.
Those filings also revealed the technical challenges that the Trump administration faced in trying to return the money.
Among the many obstacles, the Trump administration said it had to stand up an entirely new system that could process refunds in bulk and disentangle illegal tariffs from legal ones on those same goods.
At first, the government didn’t even have a way to deposit money directly into the bank accounts of most importers, customs officials said.
As a result, the refund system that debuted on Monday, known as CAPE, can only process imports only at a certain point of the duty-paying process.
That covers about 63 percent of import entries subject to IEEPA tariffs, the government previously said , though it plans to expand the system soon.
In its prior public guidance, customs said it expected it would take 60 to 90 days to issue a refund once it accepts an importer’s filing.
Katie Hilferty, who oversees the trade practice at the law firm Morgan Lewis, described the refund process as novel and complex, adding that she would be “pleasantly surprised” if refunds were paid as quickly as the government said.
But, she added, given the scale of the operation, “I would not be surprised if there are technical glitches or other processing errors that occur.”
Some small-business owners seemed especially pessimistic, particularly after weathering a year of ever-changing tariff pressures from Washington.
“I wouldn’t say I’m at all optimistic that they are going to come in a timely manner,” said Cassie Abel, the founder and chief executive of Wild Rye, which produces outdoor wear for women.
Her company also participated in the We Pay the Tariffs coalition that has opposed the president.
Ms.
Abel said she was expecting about $250,000 in refunds, plus interest.
Even if they are able to recoup their tariffs, the largest U.S. companies are likely to face pressure to share any refunds with customers, who have seen prices rise as a result of Mr.
Trump’s duties.
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FedEx has already said it would try to return any refund money to customers.
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Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
At least one company, FedEx, has already said it would try to return the money to customers.
The shipping giant is frequently listed as the importer of record, but it passes along the duties owed to the customers and companies that purchased the goods.
Another company, Costco, has signaled it could pass on the benefit of any refunds received to shoppers, potentially in the form of lower prices.
Yet the buy-in-bulk retailer still faces a new class action lawsuit from shoppers who believe it should give the money directly back to customers.
Alex Durante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit that generally favors lower taxes, said he did not expect businesses to exhibit an “immediate urge to pass all that back to consumers.”
For one thing, he said, many companies are bracing for the president to finalize a set of new tariffs to replace those that the Supreme Court invalidated.
That, he explained, would probably also limit businesses from spending much of their refunds on hiring or production, neutering any economic impact.
“They’re still in a world of uncertainty,” Mr.
Durante said of businesses, adding that the dynamic “hasn’t shifted so much.”
To impose his replacement tariffs, the Trump administration has opened investigations into dozens of other countries’ trade practices under a provision of the 1974 Trade Act.
Those inquiries are expected to result in tariffs similar in magnitude to those that the Supreme Court struck down.
Mr.
Trump has already applied a temporary 10 percent tariff on most imports using another section of the 1974 law.
Small business and states have once again challenged Mr.
Trump over his use of the latter authority, known as Section 122.
The companies in that case are represented by the Liberty Justice Center, the legal group that prevailed against Mr.
Trump over his IEEPA duties at the Supreme Court.
Sara Albrecht, the chairman of the center, sounded optimistic before Monday that the refunds could proceed at a good pace.
But, she added, it would not undo the damage done to businesses since Mr.
Trump announced his tariffs at the event he had labeled “Liberation Day” last April.
“It still doesn’t address the harm that small businesses endured over the past year,” Ms.
Albrecht said, explaining that the layoffs and other cuts that firms had to make mean they are “not going to be made whole.”
A correction was made on April 20, 2026:
An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Cassie Abel’s company.
It is Wild Rye, not Wild Ride.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction.
If you spot an error, please let us know at corrections@nytimes.com.
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U.S. forces struck another vessel in the Caribbean, killing three.
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Gen.
Francis L.
Donovan of the Marine Corps, the head of the Southern Command, ordered the strike in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday.
Credit...
Eric Lee for The New York Times
The U.S. military attacked a boat in the Caribbean Sea on Sunday, killing three people.
The strike raised the death toll to at least 180 in the campaign by the United States against people it accuses of smuggling drugs at sea.
Gen.
Francis L.
Donovan of the Marine Corps, head of the Southern Command, ordered the strike, the command said in a statement on social media.
It included a 12-second video showing a boat zooming through the water and then exploding.
Legal specialists on the use of lethal force have said that the strikes are illegal, extrajudicial killings because the military cannot deliberately target civilians who do not pose an imminent threat of violence, even if they are suspected of engaging in criminal acts.
The Trump administration has not provided evidence of drug smuggling.
The Southern Command, which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean from its headquarters near Miami, cited unspecified intelligence in the announcement.
It said the boat had been traveling on “known narco-trafficking routes” and was “engaged in narco-trafficking operations.”
The attack, the 52nd since the U.S. campaign against the boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific started in early September, continued a recent increase in the pace of strikes.
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