Editors’ Blog

For a couple weeks, the green world has been rife with rumors that the Trump White House was preparing a series of executive orders to strip climate groups of their non-profit status. In some versions of the story there were attacks far beyond revoking nonprofit status. But it was all rumors, nothing nailed down or tied to a specific source with direct knowledge, at least in any way that a news organization was able to confirm. Then, last night, Bloomberg finally reported the outlines of the story. Climate groups are in the crosshairs, as is CREW, the corruption in government group. As in the earlier scuttlebutt, Earth Day is purported to be the day when the axe may fall. The full scope of the assault remains unclear. (There is chatter that they’ll soon move on to immigration, voting rights and pro-democracy groups.)

Let’s start with the standard disclaimer: this is all completely illegal. There are a series of criteria for nonprofit status tied to the avoidance of explicitly electoral political activity, financial management, internal governance and other matters. You can lose your status for those reasons. The President cannot remove the status because he doesn’t like you or he doesn’t like your ideas.

I learned this afternoon that the entire NIH payment system is currently frozen. So this applies to all grantees. This is because of DOGE’s new “Defend the Spend” caper, which was reported this morning in the Post and which has already led to cutoffs in payments to doctors and health workers serving the poor. The idea behind the plan is to require itemized lists and justifications for all items purchased or money spent with each draw down of funds from a grant account. I’m not clear yet whether this is merely a policy DOGE has imposed or policy backed by an additional software layer they’ve built on to the current system. It sounds like it may be the latter. But I don’t have clarity on that. Intentional sabotage aside, the whole idea seems wholly unworkable without creating crazy bottlenecks. But that sounds like the point.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case and Republicans’ ongoing attempt to steal a North Carolina Supreme Court seat.

I mentioned earlier that I was speaking with a source who had an NEH grant canceled. These cancelations happened a couple weeks ago, and have been widely reported, but I wanted to share some of the atmospherics of those cancelations. By the standards of grants we’re hearing about at big research universities, the dollar value of the grant is quite small, not even that far into six figures. The specifics of the grant or the recipient or the nature of the work aren’t what I want to discuss. I know what it is. It sounds like a fascinating project. But I wanted to share some details with you because I think it provides a window into the DOGE world. Even amidst the scholarly carnage and willful destruction, it’s bizarre to the point of comedy and right back to bizarre. I can’t describe it any better than just giving you some examples.

Our conversations today are full of fairly moralizing claims about anticipatory obedience or obeying in advance. But much of what is happening is what I would classify as failures of imagination. They may have substantively the same effect, similar actions. But they’re different.

For instance, today FEMA rejected a request from Washington state for disaster relief funds for a cyclone that hit the state last fall. As these things go, the sums are relatively small — $34 million. But the flat rejection is almost unheard of, from my experience. Unheard of, but, given the players, totally predictable. At a minimum it’s immediately understandable. You know exactly why they rejected it. I’m not saying these rejections never happen. The governmental mores have changed in recent decades. Assenting to these requests is generally a matter of course and I suspect when there are disagreements it’s handled informally in a de facto negotiation. When it’s a major disaster and it’s a matter of billions it’s a different story. But from what I can tell here, FEMA just said: No. That disaster doesn’t count.

We’re already seeing signs of this across the federal government. With things that are at all discretionary, blue states are just out of luck. Washington Governor Bob Ferguson (D) said, “This is another troubling example of the federal government withholding funding.”

That’s it?

You’ve likely seen that Harvard officially and publicly refused the Trump White House’s latest set of demands. You can see the letter here. I would say that if you’re going to read only one letter, it should actually be the one the White House (notionally the GSA, HHS and Education) sent to Harvard, which the university published along with its response.

It’s a very clarifying letter. It’s not too much to say it essentially demands operational control over the whole university or perhaps more specifically a kind of receivership of the sort police departments sometimes go into under consent to decrees after they’re caught framing or torturing prisoners. When I first read it I was not … well, certainly not happy to see it but it occurred to me that the demands were not only substantively of an indefensible character but also very tenuous legally. It’s good to have this fight on these grounds because, as I said, they demand to put the entire university under the direct control, down to hiring, curriculum, admissions and more, of MAGA operatives. It’s been suggested to me by one person familiar with the university’s decision-making that waiting for the White House to spell out all its demands on paper may have been by design to put the university’s refusal on the surest legal footing. If that’s the case, it was smart to wait.

Here’s how I look at today’s White House spectacle.

I don’t really care what these two men say. The only next step I’m focused on is the one that now faces the Supreme Court. The White House is now brazenly ignoring the crystal clear import and goal of the Court’s order which is not to facilitate merely the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia, but his “release from custody in El Salvador.” The Court will now rapidly have to decide whether to knuckle under to this institutional humiliation or stand its ground. I don’t know which course it will choose. But I am very eager to find out.

Nayib Bukele is actively and publicly conspiring not only to violate American domestic law but the orders of American courts. El Salvador is a minor power, essentially a city-state, which even in our current degraded state requires the friendship and almost always the aid of the United States. Bukele is interfering not only in American domestic politics but the American legal and constitutional process. These are grave offenses against the sovereignty of the American people and the American constitutional order.

Trump won’t be in power forever. The next Democratic administration won’t be like the last one. He needs to know that, and the consequences of that, today.

Any Democratic politician who doesn’t understand this and say as much publicly should have no future in elected office.