Trump admin updates: White House asks court to stay order to ground deportation flights

President Donald Trump is expected to visit the Justice Department on Friday, a move that comes as he has sought to assert control over the nation’s top law-enforcement agency that brought two historic, thwarted prosecutions against him.

The rare visit will mark Trump’s first time inside the walls of the Robert F. Kennedy building as president and follows nearly a decade’s worth of conflict that has proven to be the ultimate stress test for the Justice Department’s post-Watergate norms intended to preserve independence from the White House.

Dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were fired, as well as DOJ and FBI officials who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump.

Trump's visit to DOJ is his first to any government agency since taking office, though it's not without precedent. The last visit by a sitting American president to the building was by former President Barack Obama, who attended a retirement ceremony in 2015 for Eric Holder.

-ABC News' Alexander Mallin and Katherine Faulders

Prior to becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth was very critical of military standards that he felt had enabled women to serve in combat units.

He announced in a memo on Wednesday a “rapid force-wide review” of “existing standard set by U.S. military branches pertaining to physical fitness, body composition, and grooming, which includes but is not limited to beards."

The comments reflect the military standards that he was critical of prior to helming the Department of Defense.

-ABC News' Luis Martinez

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Government Efficiency to hand over key documents that may shed light on the group’s attempt to reduce the size of the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan – who previously oversaw President Donald Trump’s election interference case – ordered the government to turn over materials related to DOGE and Elon Musk’s efforts to reduce the size of federal agencies, freeze federal contracts, access sensitive databases and terminate federal employees.

“The court concludes that granting expedited discovery is in the best interest of all parties,” Chutkan wrote.

The order comes after a group of 14 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging Musk's role as head of DOGE, alleging his “sweeping authority" is in violation of the Constitution.

Chutkan denied their request for an emergency order last month in part because the plaintiffs lacked the evidence to show the irreparable harm of Musk’s agency; now, the attorneys general are hoping to use the discovery process to find the evidence they need.

However, the judge placed some limitations on the demand for evidence, finding that Trump himself is exempt from the order and excluding electronic communications like emails or texts.

Chutkan is also considering whether to issue an injunction blocking Musk from running DOGE.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous

The Department of Education's far-reaching layoffs have decimated a small statistical agency considered to be the "authoritative and trusted source" of information on the education system in the United States, several former employees familiar with the situation told ABC News.

Since the 1860s, the National Center for Education Statistics has collected data used to measure academic success, productivity and crime and safety in schools, among other topics.

It issues a congressionally-mandated test called the National Assessment of Education Progress -- better known as the Nation's Report Card -- which, since 1969, has been considered the gold standard of testing to compare the academic performance and progress of students across all 50 states.

But as of this week, nearly all of the agency's statisticians have been fired, according to former employees, gutting the agency and raising questions about how it can continue its work to measure the performance of the country's 18,000 school districts or the efficacy of any policy changes.

-ABC News' Benjamin Siegel