“The Trump administration’s rules for how White House staff can interact with the Justice Department are a departure from Biden-era guidance, explicitly saying the president and vice president and their top lawyers can discuss ongoing criminal and civil cases with the attorney general and her deputies,” the Washington Post reports.

New York Times: “The distinctive feature of the current situation, several legal scholars said, is its chaotic flood of activity that collectively amounts to a radically new conception of presidential power. But the volume and speed of those actions may overwhelm and thus thwart sober and measured judicial consideration.”

“It will take some time, though perhaps only weeks, for a challenge to one of Mr. Trump’s actions to reach the Supreme Court. So far he has not openly flouted lower court rulings temporarily halting some of his initiatives, and it remains to be seen whether he would defy a ruling against him by the justices.”

CNN: As Trump team overhauls government, a constitutional crisis looms.

“A 19-year-old acolyte of Elon Musk known online as ‘Big Balls’ is listed as having taken on a new role at the State Department, raising concerns among some diplomats about his potential access to sensitive information and the growing reach of his tech billionaire boss into America’s diplomatic apparatus,” the Washington Post reports.

“President Donald Trump is expected to pardon former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich,” Axios reports.

“Blagojevich served eight years in prison on charges stemming from his effort to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after Obama won the 2008 presidential election, until Trump commuted his 14-year sentence in 2020.”

The Trump administration is making an urgent push to end a court order barring top officials’ access to the federal government’s massive payment system operated by the Treasury Department, saying the “remarkable intrusion” is unconstitutional and should be “dissolved immediately,” Politico reports.

From the Justice Department: “Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president.”

“A federal judge says the Trump administration has been violating his order to resume funding federal grants that the White House attempted to block with a blanket spending freeze last month,” Politico reports.

“U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered the administration to ‘immediately restore frozen funding’ while his order remains in effect, including to the National Institutes of Health and to fulfill the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act.”

Said McConnell: “The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”

President Trump said Monday he had ordered the “immediate dismissal” of four military Boards of Visitors, claiming the advisory bodies had been “infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues,” Axios reports.