GEOFF BENNETT: Welcome to the "News Hour."

Tonight, major tariffs against Mexico and Canada have been put on hold for one month, but others against China are set to go into effect tomorrow.

AMNA NAWAZ: This all comes as President Donald Trump pushes new boundaries, taking steps to shutter an entire government agency and giving his close adviser Elon Musk unprecedented leeway to cut costs in Washington and beyond.

Our report tonight from Laura Barron-Lopez.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Tonight, major tariffs against Mexico and Canada are on pause just hours before they were set to go into effect at the stroke of midnight tonight.

President Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, after speaking by phone today, agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one-month period, Mexico pledging to put 10,000 of its troops along the U.S. southern border to help combat the flow of drugs.

And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the same delay will be given to Canada.

But other tariffs are not off the table.

A 10 percent tariff will remain on China, one of the United States' largest trading partners as punishment, the White House says, for Chinese-made fentanyl flowing into the country.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: This is retaliatory.

This is retaliatory to a certain extent.

We have to stop people from pouring in and we have to stop fentanyl.

And that includes China.

Fentanyl has killed this year at least 200,000 people.

It's pouring in from China through Mexico and Canada, and they have got to stop it.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The now-delayed tariffs on everything from produce in the grocery aisle to lumber and building materials to automobiles and electronics.

The president admitted they would cost Americans.

DONALD TRUMP: We may have short term some little pain and people understand that, but long term the United States has been ripped off by virtually every country in the world.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The move follows backlash.

Canada threatened a 25 percent tariff this weekend on billions in U.S. goods.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU, Canadian Prime Minister: If President Trump wants to usher in a new golden age for the United States, the better path is to partner with Canada, not to punish us.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also sending shockwaves across its own federal government.

This morning, staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, were told to work from home today because the agency's headquarters was closed.

Its Web site was also shut down, as multiple USAID officials have been placed on administrative leave.

DONALD TRUMP: I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: The White House and billionaire Elon Musk have not provided evidence backing up claims of widespread corruption at USAID.

In a midnight conversation his platform X, Musk said the president wants the agency shut down altogether.

ELON MUSK, Owner, X: You have just got to basically get rid of the whole the .

It's beyond repair.

He agreed with that we should -- we should shut it down.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: This comes as Elon Musk's task force, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has also gained unprecedented access to sensitive internal government systems, including a Treasury Department payment system, which holds private information millions of Americans, and classified spaces in USAID.

Musk's team has also accessed systems at the General Services Administration and personal records for federal employees through the Office of Personnel Management, essentially known as the government's H.R.

DONALD TRUMP: He's got access only to letting people go that he thinks are no good if we agree with him, and it's only if we agree with him.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thousands of other government web pages have also been taken down since Friday afternoon, according to an analysis by The New York Times, all in order to satisfy President Trump's executive orders targeting diversity initiatives and gender ideology, and a shakeup at the FBI.

The acting FBI director was ordered by the acting attorney general to remove a number of senior FBI executives and to hand over the names of any FBI employee who worked on January 6 cases.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much, everybody.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: All part of the unprecedented purge of anyone considered to be an enemy or disloyal to the president.

AMNA NAWAZ: And Laura joins us now.

So, Laura, the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, exactly what is it and how much access do Musk and his team have?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, that's the million-dollar question, Amna.

What is DOGE?

Is it a federal advisory committee?

How many people work for DOGE?

Is it being run by newly appointed government officials?

And have they gone through background and security clearance checks?

And those are all questions that I ask the White House and have not received an answer on.

But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said today that Elon Musk is a special government employee and claimed that he's abiding by all applicable federal laws.

But she did not answer if Elon Musk has gone through necessary security clearances.

And as far as the scope of this, Amna, it's expansive.

In addition to access to the Treasury payment system that we reported, "News Hour" obtained an e-mail today that was sent to the Small Business Administration employees, stating that the agency needed to provide - - quote -- "access to all SBA systems."

They needed to provide access to Edward Coristine.

He's a member of Musk's DOGE team who reportedly recently graduated from high school and worked for a Musk tech company previously.

And in a call with agency staff, Coristine said he needed access to the H.R.

system, to the contract system, and to payment systems.

AMNA NAWAZ: We know that DOGE and the Trump administration are already facing some lawsuits because of DOGE's actions so far.

Just walk us through those.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Multiple lawsuits, as you said, Amna.

There's one from the State Democracy Defenders Fund and other groups that are aimed at nailing down exactly what is DOGE and is it in violation of that Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires a lot of transparency.

There's another lawsuit, though, that's been brought by federal employees against the Office of Personnel Management, which we know that DOGE and Musk must got access to.

And the lawsuit is over an e-mail system that allows the agency to send e-mails to all civilian federal employees at once, which our sources and other outlets have reported was a specific project of DOGE and Musk.

And I spoke to Kel McClanahan.

He's the executive director of the National Security Counselors, and he's a lawyer bringing that lawsuit, and he had this to say.

KEL MCCLANAHAN, Executive Director, National Security Counselors: They have decided that the things that worked for them there are a good idea to implement in the federal government.

The problem is that the federal government, or any government, for that matter, does not function like a business, and it literally cannot function like a business.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: And moments ago, another lawsuit, Amna.

The AFL-CIO, an advocacy group, sued the Treasury Department for giving Elon Musk and DOGE access to that federal payment system.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura, when you talk to legal experts, what are they telling you about the legality of all of this?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So whether Elon Musk is a special government employee, as the White House has said, or he's a full-time federal government employee, the criminal conflict of interest statute applies to him.

And that's according to legal experts I spoke to, including Richard Painter, who served as White House ethics lawyer to George W. Bush.

RICHARD PAINTER, Former Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush: It is a crime for federal officers to participate in a government matter that has a direct and predictable effect on their own financial holdings.

The president and the vice president are exempt from that statute, but no one else is.

And so if Elon Musk is a federal officer, he will have to divest, but he simply cannot start bossing around the agencies, telling people in the agencies what to do.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: So Musk has two options, essentially, according to Richard Painter and other lawyers I spoke to.

He can sell off, as Painter said, his interests, his holdings, his businesses, or he can recuse himself from government matters that could affect his businesses.

And so that means potentially anything involving cryptocurrency, electric vehicles, SpaceX, or the social media company X.

Now, today, President Trump said that Musk is tasked with shrinking the government and that, if there's a conflict or a problem, that he will make sure that Musk and DOGE don't go near it.

But there's a pattern here, Amna, that suggests that there's little to no guardrails around Elon Musk and DOGE, and that's what we're hearing from a number of sources across the federal government.

And Musk could ultimately be vulnerable to lawsuits even five years from now, according to the lawyers we spoke to.

AMNA NAWAZ: Laura Barron-Lopez, thanks for your reporting.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Thank you.