The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) is a federal data collection system, run out of CDC, “designed to identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems, to monitor changes in health status, and to measure progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants,” in the words of the program’s website. It has run continuously since 1988 and covers everything from the particulars of newborn health and morbidity to issues like post-partum depression in mothers. I can report that the Trump CDC has shuttered the program as part of its general clampdown on medical research and public health information.
Read MoreI’m trying to compile a list of all the town halls where GOP members of Congress got rocked by constituents this past week while they were on break. There are so many now that I can’t really write a whole post about each one. But I wanted to ask if you could send me links if there are examples where your member of Congress or Senator had a similar experience so I can add it to the list.
Diana Harshbarger (Tennessee) Friday townhall in Tennessee
Keith Self (Texas) Saturday (3/1) townhall (video) in Wylie.
Roger Marshall (Kansas) Saturday (3/1) townhall in Oakley
Glenn Grothman (Wisconsin) Friday morning town hall in Oshkosh
Scott Fitzgerald (Wisconsin) town hall in West Bend on Thursday.
Kevin Hern (Oklahoma) town hall in Glenpool on Thursday.
Cliff Bentz (Oregon) mutliple town halls in eastern Oregon this week.
Nick Begich (Alaska) confronted at airport last week.
Rich McCormick (Georgia) town hall in Roswell on Thursday.
Jay Obernolte (California) Yucca Valley townhall on Saturday.
Mark Alford (Missouri) Belton townhall on Monday.
If your Rep. or Senator got rocked at a townhall last week and he or she isn’t on our list please send us a link with the story. You can send us an email at talk at talkingpointsmemo dot com.
In Oregon’s 2nd district, Rep. Cliff Bentz (R) got a rude awakening in four town halls he held in this past week. At one point in his town hall in La Grande he chided the audience, saying a lot of representatives had refused to even hold town halls. So they should be grateful he decided to show up.
Note that this is an R+15 district — basically the eastern two-thirds of the state.
From the La Grande Observer …
Read MorePresident Trump has abruptly fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown Jr., and is replacing him with a retired three star general, Dan Caine. This portends a future grave crisis as the President attempts to restructure the military into one personally loyal to him. Caine has not been a service chief or held a combatant command or been the head of the air forces of a combatant command. So basically he’s held none of the assignments which normally precedes elevation to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
I don’t know enough about the internal workings of the Joint Staff to know how big a problem that is in itself. But this is the President reaching far down the pecking order to someone who isn’t even on active duty in the military for the critical position not only as the chief military advisory to the President (the Chairman’s statutory role) but the key person at the contact point of civilian control over the military. Given Trump’s well-known impulses and ambitions, we must be very, very wary and suspicious of what understandings Trump has or believes he has with Caine.
This one is really, really bad.
Late Update: In its own way equally ominous, Trump tonight fired the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Among many other things it’s the military lawyers who determine what is a legal order and what’s not. If you’re planning to give illegal orders they are an obvious obstacle.
Important new Times story on issue I discussed here in the Ed Blog earlier this week: how the White House is using notifications to the Federal Register as a way to get around judges’ orders unfreezing NIH grant funding.
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.”
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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.
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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.
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