According to Politico, the White House has a new buzzword: Precision. Gone are the days — i.e., yesterday — when DOGE indiscriminately torched the livelihoods of federal employees in the tens of thousands. Now they’re indiscriminately torching the livelihoods of tens of thousands under the new branding of “precision,” or something like that. Politico runs with the new branding but is then forced to concede that the firings continuing pretty much exactly as they have been.

Following up on my post below about the beginnings of a visible backlash against Elon Musk’s wilding spree throughout the federal government, I remain very eager to hear from you about what you might be hearing from your senators and representatives. From the beginning of the DOGE wilding spree there’s been a disconnect between what Republican members of Congress are saying in DC and what they’re telling constituents back home. As I noted in today’s Backchannel, that cleavage has expanded dramatically over the last week. They’re hearing from angry constituents in their districts. Some are telling local press that Elon is out of control. Some are saying that while they’re fully in support of President Trump’s goals, they think Elon is going about it in the wrong way. (If you haven’t read today’s Backchannel it includes a lot of important context.) It’s time to ask members of Congress whether they support DOGE or not — as close to a yes or no question as one can get it. Every response you forward to me will help me greatly in charting the evolution of the public response to the DOGE attack on the American republic.

A wild email out this afternoon from Acting NIH Director Matthew J. Memoli. On its face it’s an “upward and onward, we’ll get through this” letter. But along the way you have these notes like “when this transition is behind us, NIH may look different.” Yep, probably so.

He then explains that Bobby Kennedy Jr. believes deeply in NIH’s mission. As I told an NIH employee a short time ago, the claim that Kennedy believes deeply in NIH’s mission is probably a bigger hit to morale than saying we’ll all be out of a job in a month. But not to fear, says Memoli: “We will have many opportunities to demonstrate our value to Secretary Kennedy in the coming weeks and months.”

To share confidential tips about events unfolding in the federal government you can contact me on Signal at joshtpm dot 99 or via encrypted mail at joshtpm (at) protonmail dot com.

Against the backdrop of a month of chaos and destruction, something began to shift more or less in the middle of this week. I don’t want to overstate what it portends in the short term. Elon Musk remains firmly in the saddle. And even as many of Trump’s advisors grow concerned about the impact of Musk’s rampage, Donald Trump himself appears to be maintaining his support. The moment was captured yesterday at what are now the more or less constant CPACs where Steve Bannon tossed off a Nazi salute and Musk appeared in a “Dark MAGA” baseball cap sporting a chainsaw and basking in the adulation of the MAGA/CPAC faithful awash in the joy a certain kind of individual derives from destruction and pain. The picture itself is a key signpost in the story. Make a note of it. Musk himself posted it to Twitter, labeled with “The DogeFather” and flexing with the text: “This is a real picture.”

But there’s something else going on — not so much the tide turning as a certain battle being joined. Beginning this week, local TV stations around the country have begun running human interest stories about veterans, members of military families or Trump supporters getting fired as part of Elon’s purge. Meanwhile, we can see a growing cleavage between what congressional Republicans are saying in Washington and what they’re saying back in their districts.

From the beginning of this drama going on a month ago, the White House has been laser-focused on shutting down government-supported medical research in the United States. Of course, much of that is research into cancer cures or fundamental research building toward the same. The precise goal of all this shutting down is difficult to uncover — likely one half an effort to destroy or exercise control over academic/research institutions mixed with post-COVID hostility to medical research itself. On paper the effort was put on hold by a mix of the White House backing off and the original orders being blocked by judges. But in fact the White House has found very effective workarounds to evade the impact of those court orders. And that evasion, or those alternative paths to shutting down research grants, has accelerated, clamping down even harder this week.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the compromising of Eric Adams, Elon Musk’s role as heat shield for Donald Trump and a new executive order.

To share confidential tips about events unfolding in the federal government you can contact me on Signal at joshtpm dot 99 or via encrypted mail at joshtpm (at) protonmail dot com.

I don’t like to think in conspiratorial ways. But DOGE currently has far deeper and far more extensive access to U.S. government computer systems — and is far deeper into the national security space — than is conceivably necessary for anything related to their notional brief and goals. I don’t just mean this about the front-facing notional goals of making the federal government “efficient.” I mean it as well in the most sinister versions of the group’s goals — hollowing out the federal bureaucracy, destroying oversight agencies which pose threats to Musk’s business interests, building centralized command and control over budgets, employment, personal data, etc., etc.

WIRED is now reporting that two DOGE operatives, including the 19-year-old Edward Coristine (aka “Big Balls”), have gained access to the computer systems of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the agency charged with the defense of the federal government’s civilian computer networks as well as helping to organize the defense of the country’s critical infrastructure.

I continue to hear new accounts of the pulverizing of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The news focuses on funds and employees, each of which of course are pivotal. But less reported on is the administration systematically shutting down the various portals created to allow citizens to report abuses, the systems for monitoring of key agencies in response to complaints, various materials created to educate citizens about how to protect their rights in the financial world. It’s all collectively awful. But it reminds me of issues tied to branding.

The CFPB is more than a decade old and I’m a bit shamefaced to admit that I still often forget the precise order of the initials that function as its de facto name. This may be its relative youth or my own neurology. I remember NLRB and NIH more or less well. But it reminds me that the name of the agency and how it is discussed in the political space is half the battle and one that its supporters in the political space (as opposed to the people who work there) have more or less conceded. Any politicians discussing this should never be referring to the CFPB or even the spelled-out four-word name. It’s more like the National Consumer Help Line. Or the National Business Complaint Line. “Line” dates those ideas a bit. I hear there are now computers too. Some version of “Financial” should be in there to specify its focus. But “financial” is a bit arcane. National Bank and Credit Card Complaint Line? I’m sure others could come up with something snappier. But everybody but everybody has a complaint about bad service or businesses (banks, credit cards, payment processors, etc.) that are ripping them off. And you just can’t concede any ground on making it crystal clear to people that that is what this is.

On the campaign trail last year Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he’d end the Russo-Ukraine war on day one of his presidency. It was always a given that any peace deal struck by President Trump would be very much on Russia’s terms. But what’s developed over the last week looks qualitatively different. If not literally the same in terms of the carving up of land, these peace talks look more like the discussions leading up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the divvying up perhaps as focused on natural resource concessions as territory. That may sound a bit dramatic. But what’s actually being discussed in the meetings in Riyadh aren’t permanent or interim borders for Ukraine or repatriation of citizens or anything that might be the actual makings even of a one sided “deal.” The main topic of conversation appears to be new concessions for American companies in the Russian oil industry, which remains heavily reliant on western technology to remain productive. A particular source of discussion was a possible series of deals for American companies to participate in Russia oil exploration in parts of the Russia-claimed arctic which are now accessible because of global warming. Indeed, oil futures are currently trending down on the expectation that more unsanctioned Russian oil will soon be coming on the market.

Meanwhile the US has pressed the Ukrainians, who are excluded from the Riyadh, with an entirely different set of demands.

Was getting a read out a short time ago about firings at CMS (the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid). The cuts run deep. And giving how much of the health care economy runs through these programs that’s of course worrisome. But the most telling detail is one I’ve heard from numerous other agencies. The people actually running the agency don’t actually know how many people have been fired or who they are. If you’re in charge of and responsible for running the place you really need to know that. But as in other agencies they’re having to piece that together by doing things like seeing whose emails have been turned off or just asking them. Did you get fired? You? Can someone ask Lori if she got fired? Imagine running an agency and finding out that there had been widespread terminations but not being given any details about who they are or how many there are. That’s pretty straightforward sabotage.