Trump Administration Live Updates: R.F.K. Jr. Cancels mRNA Vaccine Contracts

In a social media post on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Trump shared a photograph of Mr. Coristine lying in the street bleeding, battered and shirtless, writing that crime in the nation’s capital was “totally out of control,” though the city’s crime rates have been falling.

“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City,” he said.

The president argued that young people in the city do not fear consequences if they commit crimes, tapping into a thorny local issue. Youth crime remains a trouble spot for D.C., with young people making up a majority of the arrests for robbery and carjacking. In April, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser announced the creation of a special police unit specifically dedicated to preventing and responding to juvenile crime.

“The Law in D.C. must be changed to prosecute these ‘minors’ as adults, and lock them up for a long time, starting at age 14,” Mr. Trump said in his social media post on Tuesday.

The episode marked the latest twist in the saga of DOGE and the young Elon Musk acolytes who came to Washington to reshape the federal government and have remained even after Mr. Musk’s public falling out with the president.

Mr. Coristine, who did not respond to a request for comment, is now working at the Social Security Administration after stints across the federal government. He played a role in dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Police officers arrested two 15-year-old suspects, a boy and a girl, both from Maryland, at the scene, according to authorities. Officials said the episode happened in the early morning hours on Sunday in an upscale neighborhood less than two miles from the White House. The two teenagers were charged with unarmed carjacking. The police said they were seeking additional suspects.

Mr. Coristine was with his “significant other” when the 10 young people approached them, according to a police report. He told officers that he pushed his girlfriend into the car “for her safety” and then “turned to deal with the suspects” before being attacked. Police officers patrolling the area interrupted the assault.

Mr. Trump did not identify Mr. Coristine in his social media post. Mr. Musk soon posted about the incident on social media, seeming to put aside his conflict with Mr. Trump and agreeing: “It is time to federalize D.C.”

The president has floated the idea of a federal takeover since the earliest weeks of his second term, a threat bolstered by legislation introduced by congressional Republicans who want to impose their policy agenda on the city’s Democrat-led government. The city has had a limited degree of self-government since the Home Rule Act of 1973.

So far, Congress and the Trump administration have taken a series of smaller bites out of D.C.’s autonomy, including handing the city an unexpected $1.1 billion budget hole and creating a federal “D.C. Safe and Beautiful” task force to work with local police officers.

Ms. Bowser has openly acknowledged the challenge of protecting the city’s delicate autonomy, and has taken steps to comply with some of Mr. Trump’s wishes. In March, she ordered the removal of the “Black Lives Matter” mural that was painted on a street leading up to the White House.

She has also pointed to the city’s falling crime rates. In January, officials announced that violent crime in the city had reached a 30-year low, with a 26 percent decline this year compared to 2024. Homicides in the city are also down 13 percent, even after a 32 percent drop last year.

Because the suspects are minors, the office of the D.C. attorney general will handle the case. The district has strict confidentiality protections for juvenile crime.

“No one who lives in, works in, or visits D.C. should experience this,” Brian Schwalb, D.C.’s attorney general, said in a statement. “It is horrific and disturbing.”

The new cancellations dismayed scientists, many of whom regard mRNA shots as the best option for protecting Americans in a pandemic.

“This is a bad day for science,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has been working to develop an mRNA vaccine against influenza.

The health department said in its release that the cancellations affected 22 projects managed by the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA.

With this move, the department is “undermining our ability to rapidly counter future biological threats,” said Rick Bright, a flu expert who was ousted as chief of BARDA during the first Trump administration and resigned from a lesser position in protest.

“We’re weakening our frontline defense against fast‑moving pathogens — a huge strategic failure that will be measured in lives lost during times of crisis,” he added.

First used during the Covid-19 pandemic by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, mRNA shots instruct the body to produce a fragment of a virus, which then sets off the body’s immune response.

Unlike traditional vaccines, which can take years to develop and test, mRNA shots can be made within months and quickly altered as the virus changes.

Mr. Kennedy has been sharply critical of the technology. In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, he claimed incorrectly that mRNA vaccines do not protect against respiratory illnesses like Covid and the flu, that they drive viruses to evolve and that a single mutation in a virus renders the vaccine ineffective.

“As the pandemic showed us, mRNA vaccines don’t perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract,” he says in the video.

“By issuing this wildly incorrect statement, the secretary is demonstrating his commitment to his long-held goal of sowing doubts about all vaccines,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

“Had we not used these lifesaving mRNA vaccines to protect against severe illness, we would have had millions of more Covid deaths,” she said.

The health department said it will favor other types of shots over those using mRNA, like whole-cell vaccines. That technology is more than 100 years old. The United States has not used a whole-cell vaccine for whooping cough since the 1990s because it was potent but harsh, often setting off high fevers and seizures.

Mr. Kennedy himself assailed the leading international vaccine organization, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for continuing to use the whole-cell vaccine in low-income countries, citing it as the reason the United States was pulling funding from the organization.

A coalition of 20 Democratic-led states had sued in response to announcements in April by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that it would repurpose funds previously available to states under the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

The announcements informed states to prepare to do without more than $4 billion that Congress had set aside for grants, asserting without citing evidence that the program had not “increased the level of hazard mitigation as much as desired.”

Since 2000, Congress has allocated billions of dollars in funding to help states prepare for large-scale disasters. According to the states’ complaint, by conservative estimates, every dollar spent on disaster mitigation projects “saves an average of $6 in post-disaster costs.”

The program, known as BRIC, was launched in 2020 during President Trump’s first term, replacing the pre-disaster mitigation program that preceded it.

FEMA approved around $4.5 billion in grants for nearly 2,000 projects since then, much of it allocated for coastal storm preparedness and other projects connected to threats exacerbated by climate change.

But in April, the agency moved to end the program, describing it as “wasteful” and “more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.” Critics of the Trump administration called the move an ideologically driven effort to shutter federal programs that acknowledge climate change.

“The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,” Judge Stearns wrote. “The potential hardship to the Government, in contrast, is minimal.”

In court filings in July, the government denied that it had actually terminated the program or stopped approving grants. But Judge Stearns concluded that the program was clearly in jeopardy, pointing to a June report by FEMA showing that the remaining $4 billion in the BRIC account had been transferred to another pool of general disaster relief funding.

“Although the Government equivocates about whether it has, in fact, ended the BRIC program, the States’ evidence of steps taken by FEMA to implement the announced termination portend the conclusion that a determination has in fact been made and that FEMA is inching towards a fait accompli,” Judge Stearns wrote.

He nonetheless noted that the agency did not appear to have canceled any grants or denied any requests for extensions so far, and described his decision in granting an injunction as designed to maintain the status quo for now.

His order on Wednesday blocked the government from spending the funds allocated to BRIC for “non-BRIC purposes” for the duration of the lawsuit. Still, he stressed that the government remained free to ask that the court release funds for actual disaster relief in the event of an emergency.

Attorney General Pam Bondi this week authorized prosecutors to investigate the inquiry the president calls the “Russia hoax” and present a case to a grand jury in South Florida if the evidence warrants it, according to people briefed on the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing investigations.

Details are scant, including whether prosecutors have taken action. But Trump appointees are reluctant to present evidence to a grand jury in the District of Columbia where key decisions in the Russia investigation were made nearly a decade ago. They believe it would be nearly impossible to find sympathetic jurors in a courthouse overseen by a federal judge, James E. Boasberg, whom the Trump team regards as an enemy.

Fox News on Monday reported that Ms. Bondi had made the order, which comes after a referral from Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence.

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The decision to authorize a grand jury investigation, which could include subpoenas, into the statements and testimony by government officials surrounding the 2016 election suggests the Trump administration has begun turning its rhetoric of revenge into action. Still, there are a number of legal and practical hurdles that any such inquiry would have to overcome, chief among them the statute of limitations that would seemingly bar criminal charges based on conduct that is more than five years old.

Such concerns, however significant, have been swept aside, at least for now, by the eagerness to appease an impatient president demanding to use the vast powers of federal law enforcement to exact vengeance — and the political imperative of making the Epstein fiasco disappear.

Even in the absence of a legal success, such as an indictment or conviction, the effort itself accomplishes political objectives in a department that considers investigations largely intended to name and shame a legitimate use of its authority.

Many Trump advisers and allies also view the Russia investigation as a gross abuse of power, while some were personally affected by the inquiry and forced to hire lawyers to defend themselves.

Mr. Trump has privately carped about the slow pace of Justice Department action to his political enemies, according to people in his orbit, and made it unmistakably known what he wanted. “Scum” was how Mr. Trump described those who investigated him during a speech in the department’s Great Hall in March, as Ms. Bondi and Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, looked on.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly urged his backers to drop a fierce pressure campaign to release undisclosed Epstein files and rally under the “weaponization” banner. On Tuesday, he told CNBC that he had “nothing” to do with Ms. Bondi’s order — then celebrated the move to investigate Obama administration national security officials, saying “they deserve it.”

The decision also comes as the Trump administration faces increasing pressure to produce more information about the F.B.I.’s files on Mr. Epstein, the financier who was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges before he hanged himself in a jail cell in 2019. Last month, Mr. Blanche, a former Trump defense lawyer, interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, Mr. Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator.

Law enforcement officials have privately talked about releasing at least some of the information she provided, although they are still discussing the extent of what they will disclose, according to several people familiar with the conversations.

The emergence of the grand jury inquiry was unusual in several ways — not least, because its existence was revealed to right-leaning media outlets like Fox News before any actual investigative steps had apparently been taken.

Moreover, it remains unclear who the grand jury might investigate and for what, if any, crimes.

Thus far, the Justice Department has moved more slowly to scrutinize Biden-era officials who participated in the two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions of Mr. Trump.

Last week, an obscure agency that scrutinizes potential misconduct by or against federal employees, the Office of Special Counsel, took a step in that direction, confirming it was investigating Jack Smith, the former federal prosecutor who oversaw the criminal cases against Mr. Trump.

The agency is trying to determine if Mr. Smith may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal workers from using their government jobs to promote political candidates. It is unclear how that investigation could result in any substantive consequences for Mr. Smith, given that the most severe punishment allowed under the Hatch Act is dismissal, and Mr. Smith resigned his government position many months ago.

It is not clear whether Mr. Trump, who is marking his first six months in office, would have pushed quite so forcefully for the department to act against his perceived foes if the Epstein case was not still smoldering political fire. But it has certainly added to the urgency, administration officials said.

Politicians and influencers on the right flank of the Republican Party — who have demanded a full accounting of Mr. Epstein’s interactions with wealthy and powerful friends — are equally if not more enthusiastic about deploying the Justice Department, F.B.I., and intelligence services to uncover what they claim to be a vast decade-long, Democratic-led conspiracy to destroy Mr. Trump.

A few of Mr. Trump’s key congressional allies and some of the most vocal members of his base have been beating the drums for arrests almost from the moment that the bureau and intelligence officials started releasing documents on the Russia investigation last month.

On Monday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, posted a message on social media with a “scorecard” showing that no one had been arrested yet for popular MAGA-world bugbears like the “Russia Collusion Hoax,” “Jan. 6” and the “2020 Election.”

“Don’t talk about it if you aren’t going to do it,” Ms. Greene wrote.

Among the most fervid Trump supporters calling for arrests are the rioters who were charged in connection with — and then granted clemency for — the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Many of them have demanded retribution against Mr. Trump’s enemies, citing their own grievances as federally prosecuted defendants.

“Dear God, has anyone been arrested yet?” wrote one pardoned rioter, Benjamin Martin, who was initially sentenced to 13 months in prison for holding open a door at the Capitol so that others could spray chemicals at the police.

Few of those calling for the investigation have been as maximalist as Mr. Trump himself. He recently wrote on social media that President Obama should be arrested as a traitor for treason.

In late July, Ms. Gabbard blindsided Ms. Bondi by referring the investigation of the Russian investigation to the Justice Department, claiming a cache of documents she released proved Obama administration officials engaged in a “treasonous conspiracy.”

In response, Ms. Bondi announced the creation of a multiagency “strike force” to investigate the charges. Her subsequent grand jury order was made as part of that process, according to an official briefed on the move.

The claims by Trump supporters that Obama-era officials engaged in a far-reaching conspiracy to undermine his 2016 campaign have already been exhaustively investigated by a special counsel, John Durham, with little to show for it.

Mr. Durham filed two criminal indictments based on that investigation, one against a private practice lawyer on charges of lying to the F.B.I., and another against a Russia analyst for essentially the same offense. Each case ended in acquittals.

A new investigation would face a potentially steeper challenge, relying on the years-old statements and the recollection of senior intelligence and law enforcement officials about an election held nearly nine years ago.

But not every investigation of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies has led to meaningful consequences.

In November 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tapped a U.S. attorney in Utah to review a number of issues related to Hillary Clinton, as well as the 2016 election. That effort lasted about two years before quietly ending with no substantive action or public findings.

“PLEASE DISREGARD,” Liana J. Castano, an official in ICE’s field operations division, said in a follow-up email to agency offices around the country.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the program had not been authorized by agency leaders, adding that “no such policy is in effect or has ever been in effect.” The email canceling the program was sent shortly after The New York Times inquired about its existence.

But the short-lived effort underscored the mounting pressure on ICE to meet Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation targets. The agency has offered signing bonuses of up to $50,000, promised to hire as many as 10,000 agents and initiated a vigorous recruiting push on social media.

The Trump administration is seeking to transform ICE, infusing it with an enthusiasm for the president’s project of carrying out deportations on an unprecedented scale. Under Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, which he signed into law early last month, ICE’s annual budget will grow from about $8 billion to roughly $28 billion, making it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government.

Stephen Miller, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers and the architect of his immigration policy, has promoted ICE’s hiring drive in ideological terms.

“Want to mass deport illegals from Los Angeles?” he wrote on social media last week. “JOIN.ICE.GOV today and get a 50K signing/retention bonus. Make your family proud and be the hero America needs.”

Last week, the agency said it had issued more than 1,000 tentative job offers.

The bonus program that ended on Tuesday almost as quickly as it began had been described as a 30-day pilot, according to documents reviewed by The Times. Under its terms, ICE would hand out $200 bonuses for each immigrant deported within seven days of being arrested and $100 for those deported within two weeks, according to an initial memo signed by Ms. Castano that was sent to the directors and deputy directors of ICE’s field offices across the country.

It was meant to motivate officers to reduce a backlog of people awaiting deportation, “reducing overall removal costs and decreasing strain” on the agency’s detention resources, the memo stated.

To “maximize” their bonuses, the memo instructed ICE agents to deport eligible immigrants through a fast-track process known as expedited removal, which allows immigrants without legal status to be deported without court proceedings. It also said that agents could offer detainees the option of leaving the country voluntarily.

Ms. Castano did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Efforts to speed the pace of deportations — like the bonus program — could endanger the due process rights of immigrants by encouraging ICE agents to cut corners, immigration experts and former government officials said.

“That is so ungodly unethical,” said Scott Shuchart, a former senior homeland security official. “You can’t incentivize government agents to short circuit people’s procedural rights. Would you pay a bonus to judges for wrapping up trials faster?”

Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said the incident appeared to reflect how quickly ICE was moving to meet Mr. Trump’s goals.

“They’re willing to try so many different things to see what sticks,” she said.

ICE has already sped up deportations, according to a New York Times analysis of ICE data obtained via the Deportation Data Project. The share of people booked into ICE detention who were deported within 14 days increased to 30 percent in May, from 21 percent in January, the analysis showed.

And the number of deportations by ICE reached a new high in July, averaging almost 1,300 daily removals in the two weeks ending July 26. Removals averaged fewer than 800 per day in the last year of the Biden administration.

Albert Sun and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

Last month, Mr. Kupor hinted that the process was likely in its final days. The memos listing five accomplishments were started out of the blue by Elon Musk when he led the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and was tasked with shrinking the head count in the federal government. Mr. Kupor was confirmed to lead O.P.M., the government’s human resources division, on July 9.

Since Mr. Musk announced the assignment on his social media platform in February, there have been more questions than answers about how government employees should or would respond, as well as how the responses would be used.

The weekly memos became another lever of fear for thousands of federal employees who have been under threat of imminent firing since the beginning of the Trump administration. Some questioned whether the government was looking for specific indicators of progress in the responses and what, if anything, that meant for future employment.

At the time, Mr. Musk announced the order on social media then the personnel office made the assignment official in an email to government employees — a message some first interpreted to be spam or a phishing attempt. It also cemented what was emerging as the new world order in the federal government in which Mr. Musk, a tech billionaire with no government experience, was calling the shots about which government agencies and programs deserved funding.

Speaking to reporters on July 21, Mr. Kupor said that agencies had been handling the requirement differently, raising questions about how efficient the process was for measuring accountability — if that was, indeed, the initial goal of the exercise.

“I think it’s something that we should look at and see, like are we getting the value out of it that at least the people who put it in place thought they were?” he said.

Mr. Kupor said that as of that day he had not been briefed on why the agency asked for this information or what it had done with the responses. The agency has not publicly explained the purpose either.

Reuters first reported the administration’s decision to end the assignment.

The findings underscored the real stakes in the growing clash between the Trump administration and Congress over the power of the purse. Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has adopted an expansive view of his authority to recalibrate the federal ledger as he sees fit, even though the Constitution gives lawmakers the power to tax and spend.

In recent weeks, Democrats and Republicans alike had expressed discomfort over the ways in which Mr. Trump’s budgetary maneuvers may have affected vital public health research into cancer and other diseases. Some in Congress have also objected to the severe budget cuts that the president has proposed for the N.I.H. and other major health and research agencies next year.

The Trump administration on Tuesday defended some of its actions, releasing a letter that described elements of the funding delay as part of the “transition” between presidents. Officials did not respond on Tuesday to more detailed questions about canceled grants. Some congressional lawmakers have also pressed the administration about more recent interruptions to N.I.H. funds.

Russell T. Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, previously acknowledged that the administration had conducted a “review” into N.I.H. spending. He also faulted the health agency for what he described as years of “waste” while claiming it had been “weaponized against the American people.”

“We have an agency that needs dramatic overhaul,” Mr. Vought added in an interview with CBS’s “Face the Nation” in July. “Thankfully, we have a great new head of it, but we’re going to have to go line by line to make sure the N.I.H. is funded properly.”

The trouble began soon after Mr. Trump took office when he signed a slew of executive orders meant to halt federal spending on diversity, equity and inclusion. The cuts deeply affected health programs, including the N.I.H., the largest source of biomedical funding in the United States, which canceled more than 1,800 grants between February and June, the Government Accountability Office found.

For about two months, the N.I.H. also ceased publishing notices for grant reviews. That interrupted a key step in the federal award process, which delayed the delivery of public health funds to hospitals, laboratories, universities and other research organizations, according to congressional investigators.

In a letter shared with The New York Times, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services told the watchdog that they had “moved rapidly to reschedule and hold meetings impacted by the short pause, and to process grant applications.”

But ethics officials concluded on Tuesday that the Trump administration had violated federal law, which prohibits the president from withholding authorized money, a practice known as impoundment.

The office said it was also “aware” of more recent reports that White House officials had asked the health agency to “pause the issuing of grants, research contracts and training,” and “later reversed” that decision. But the watchdog said it could not confirm that money had resumed flowing, as even some Republican lawmakers had requested in recent days.

Top Democratic lawmakers immediately urged the White House to cease interrupting the flow of money at the N.I.H. and other research agencies, warning that the administration was threatening to undermine work on new cures and emerging diseases.

“Cutting off investments Congress has made into research that saves millions of lives is as backward and as inexcusable as it gets,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The accountability office has opened 40 similar investigations to determine if the Trump administration has impounded funds, The Times previously reported. Earlier, the watchdog concluded that administration officials had wrongly interrupted approved money for programs ranging from early childhood education to electric vehicle charging stations.

The White House has strenuously denied those charges. It has also sharply attacked the accountability office, while signaling that the administration would cease cooperating with some of its investigations.

The office has the power to sue to force the release of impounded funds, and recently has retained legal counsel in case it needs to take such rare action. But Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general in charge of the watchdog, previously said in an interview that filing lawsuits would be a last resort.

The move comes as the battle over the Epstein investigation and the Republican rift it ripped open continues to loom over the House during its five-week recess that Speaker Mike Johnson began a day earlier than scheduled.

Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s Republican chairman, requested that the documents be delivered by Aug. 19. He was required to issue the 11 subpoenas after Democrats forced a vote on the matter in a key House subcommittee last month.

Should the Justice Department fail to meet that deadline, it could set up a high-profile clash between the Trump administration and Congress over an issue that has sharply divided Republicans and effectively paralyzed the House.

A spokesman for the Justice Department said it had received the subpoena, but he declined to comment further.

The Trump administration’s decision to close its investigation into Mr. Epstein without releasing additional files, a reversal from previous promises, has widened a rift in the Republican Party. Many lawmakers now find themselves positioned between far-right constituents who are eager for the release of the files and President Trump, who after years of questioning the legitimacy of government institutions has urged his supporters to move on from the investigation.

Democrats have seized on the disagreement. Their move to require Mr. Comer to issue a subpoena was one of several efforts by lawmakers to force Republicans to record politically tricky votes on the matter.

“Today was an important step forward in our fight for transparency regarding the Epstein files and our dedication to seeking justice for the victims,” Representatives Robert Garcia of California and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, the Democrats who led the push for the subpoena, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Now, we must continue putting pressure on the Department of Justice until we actually receive every document.”

Three Republicans broke from Mr. Trump to back the subpoena for the Epstein files. But they also expanded the request to include subpoenas for prominent figures who held their positions during the lengthy investigation into Mr. Epstein and have frequently been targets of the president.

They included former President Bill Clinton, who was acquainted with Mr. Epstein, and Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state who ran for president against Mr. Trump in 2016.

The Oversight Committee also issued subpoenas to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director. Both men have been frequent targets of Mr. Trump’s broadsides.

The committee also sent subpoenas to former attorneys general who were overseeing the Justice Department when it was grappling with legal matters related to Mr. Epstein. The officials, who served under Democratic and Republican presidents: Merrick B. Garland, who was President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s attorney general; William P. Barr and Jeff Sessions, who were both appointed by Mr. Trump during his first term; Loretta Lynch and Eric H. Holder Jr., who were appointed by President Barack Obama; and Alberto R. Gonzales, who served under President George W. Bush.

“I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with CNBC. “I’ll take him off, because I asked him just last night, ‘Is this something you want?’ ‘Nope, I want to stay where I am.’”

Mr. Trump has relentlessly criticized Mr. Powell for not lowering interest rates according to the president’s demands, but he has repeatedly backed away from trying to remove him before his term as chair expires in May 2026.

Pressed on the names of other candidates who might serve as a replacement, Mr. Trump confirmed only that Mr. Warsh and Mr. Hassett were leading contenders. “I think the two Kevins are doing well,” Mr. Trump said. “And I have two other people who are doing well.”

His caution may be a reflection of his persistent unhappiness with Mr. Powell, whom he nominated to lead the Federal Reserve in 2017. “Sometimes they’re all very good until you put ’em in there, and then they don’t do so good,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump said he would make a decision on a replacement for Mr. Powell “soon.”

One option, he said, was to initially place his choice on the Federal Reserve Board as a replacement for Adriana D. Kugler, who announced suddenly that she would step down this week from her position as a governor. Her term was set to expire in January, but her early resignation gives Mr. Trump an opportunity to more quickly appoint someone who could eventually replace Mr. Powell as chair.

Mr. Trump sued The Journal last month after the newspaper published an article about a lewd birthday note that the publication said Mr. Trump wrote to Mr. Epstein in 2003, five years before the financier pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor. The note was accompanied by a sexually suggestive drawing. Mr. Trump has denied he was responsible for the letter or the drawing.

According to Monday’s filing, the parties have agreed that, should the motion to dismiss be denied, Mr. Murdoch would be deposed within 30 days at a “mutually agreed upon location in the United States.” The filing added that Mr. Murdoch had agreed to provide Mr. Trump with regular updates on his health.

Mr. Murdoch, the founder of News Corp, which owns The Journal, was named in the lawsuit, as well as News Corp; Dow Jones; Robert Thomson, the chief executive of News Corp; and the two reporters who wrote the article.

A representative for Mr. Murdoch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.