Editors’ Blog
On Tuesday DOGE representatives contacted the Government Accountability Office and demanded its standard level of access to analyze and “reform” the agency. Today the GAO contacted its employees via email and explained that they had told DOGE that GAO is a legislative branch agency and not subject to executive orders or the executive branch. They say they also contacted the relevant congressional committees to notify them of the attempted DOGE takeover.
Ed.Note: The original version of this post incorrectly reported that DOGE contacted GAO on Friday 16th rather than Tuesday 13th.


Over the past four months, I’ve spoken to dozens of biomedical researchers either at NIH, other government grant-making agencies or at the various American research institutions which receive U.S. government grants. Over that time, I’ve developed at least a very rudimentary understanding of the nitty-gritty mechanics of the grant-making relationship between agencies and research institutions. What I’ve learned is a fascinating and critically important dynamic operating just beneath the surface of theWhite House’s whole war on biomedical research specifically and universities generally. The world of biomedical research actually has immense latent political power, albeit largely untapped. Researchers have a much stronger hand politically and the White House’s position, in terms of public opinion, is comparatively weak.
The problem is that the world of biomedical research has close to no experience operating in a political context and especially in the context of mass politics. Much of the world of biomedical research operates through channels of review and funding connecting a few government grant-making institutions to the nationwide archipelago of research institutions and universities. Operating within those channels is so basic to the mores and experience of the research and university world that researchers have in many cases kept trying to operate within them (rebooting them, checking them for unknown clogs) long after the White House has broken them and moved on. The White House has relied on researchers’ unfamiliarity with political fights, using their sole reliance on bureaucratic channels of funding and review — which the universities and the federal government set up together going on a century ago — against them. The only other pathways through which researchers tend to assert themselves are professional organizations, very non-mass politics entities which, in ordinary times, would speak to the relevant members of Congress.
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You’ve seen our liveblog, which provides a detailed and technical look at today’s birthright citizenship oral arguments before the Supreme Court. I want to focus on a broad and critical issue. The Trump administration brought this to the Supreme Court. While the underlying or substantive issue is birthright citizenship, they were not seeking to have that issue resolved. They wanted the Court to address whether federal trial courts can issue national injunctions binding the hands of the incumbent administration.
Read MoreI want to thank everyone who came out to see Kate Riga and me at our live podcast event last night in Chicago. You made us feel very welcome and we had a great time. And it was great meeting so many of you at the happy hour after the event. This was our first TPM event outside our home stomping grounds in New York City and Washington, DC. We were so happy with how it went.
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Just before the onset of the pandemic, I’d started researching a longer project about the personalization of global politics which was accelerated by but not started by Trump. In a way, personalization is the inevitable companion of authoritarianism and autocracy. If there’s one guy who runs the show in each country, then the affairs of that state inherently become indistinguishable from that of the autocrat and his personal checkbook. Relationships between states become those of individual people.
Early in Biden’s presidency, I spoke to one of the very high-end hedge funders who are in the class of people who get invited to the dinners and shindigs with Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. This was around the time that Jared Kushner got that huge $2 billion investment in his new post-White House fund. This source described one of those dinners to me that had occurred not long before that investment. Kushner was seated to MBS’s right or left. I can’t remember which, but same difference. Given how much power MBS wields and his near unilateral control over hundreds of billions of dollars, people would probably literally kill for that level of preferment and proximity. But as it was conveyed to me, everything about that weekend or series of days suggested that Jared was just MBS’s guy. As in, MBS just loved Jared. And remember, Trump was out of power. And in early 2022 or possibly late 2021, it was by no means an obvious bet that he’d be returning to power. The relationship seemed to go far beyond a bet on the Trump family returning to power.
Read MoreThey’re already calling him “BinderKapow” Edwards. But Asheville police have now announced that they will not be filing charges against the North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards over the alleged binder-whack incident at a Rotary Club conference over the weekend in Asheville.
From TPM Reader DB …
My feeling about Qatar gifting Trump a 747 is simply that it is just embarrassing for the United States. The US can afford and can build its own state-of-the-art Air Force One. The US doesn’t need a gift from a little country of a used plane that is out of production and largely used for freight. It’s not becoming of the United States nor the President of the United States. It’s just embarrassing.


Since late in Donald Trump’s first term as President something called “Schedule F” has figured high in his plans to gut and/or make the federal workforce personally loyal to him as opposed to the constitution. The gist of it is that Schedule F would allow Trump to redefine large numbers of civil servants as the equivalent of “policy-making” political appointees who are fireable at will. After he was forced to leave the White House in 2021, Schedule F played a big role in plans for a second term. For a long time I hadn’t looked that close at the specific legal details of Schedule F as opposed to its potential impact. It was usually presented to me as a kind of ingenious bit of lawyering which allowed Trump to undo the Civil Service system from the inside. And I don’t mean Trumpers calling it ingenious I mean either by supporters of non-partisan federal employment and/or journalists who cover these matters.
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The Post has a good piece up about all the hidden ways the Trump White House is trying to break different parts of the government — through non-payment of grants (different from cancelations), arbitrary limits on purchase authority, etc. They note something very similar to the funds-ghosting I’ve reported on at the National Institutes of Health, only here with the EPA.
Here’s the key passage that TPM Reader SS flagged to my attention …
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Fascinating details emerging with the Qatari royal family giving Donald Trump the personal gift of a fully blinged out 747. Yes, they’re giving him a plane.
When I first heard this story a few days ago it at least sounded like Trump had finally lost patience with Boeing because they either couldn’t or wouldn’t or wouldn’t quickly enough produce a decked-out new Air Force One to meet Trump’s wishes. The U.S. has been trying to buy a new AF1 for a number of years and it had gotten caught up between the very different demands of Trump and Biden and maybe also Boeing’s woes. I figured the Qataris were either gifting the plane to the U.S. government or selling it. In either case it would be the U.S. government’s and it’s for the use of future Presidents, too. That’s not what’s happening.
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