I may do a longer, maybe several longer versions of this post. But I think it’s important to state categorically and clearly: DOGE and Donald Trump are trying to shut down advanced medical research, especially cancer research, in the United States. Just that. That seems like a big statement. But it’s accurate. I communicate every day with people at NIH and its various centers. I’m not basing this on their personal responses to a harrowing and disorienting situation, though that is very important in itself. I am reacting to the broader picture built up by the facts emerging from these individual conversations, combined with other reporting and actions throughout the federal government. Reporting is inevitably focused on canceled grants, dismissed researchers, bans on certain forms of communication, on and off-again bans on travel, grant review processes halted.

The White House is, at least according to Bloomberg, well on its way to creating a sovereign wealth fund, despite having no authority to create one and no legal source of money to fund it. But now they’ve hired a guy to run it, Michael Grimes. And small world, he’s Elon’s banker.

DC Circuit rules that Trump administration can remove Hampton Dellinger while the case about whether he ultimately can be removed continues.

Dellinger is the head (or was) of the Office of Special Counsel that found that a bunch of Trump/DOGE firings had been unlawful. (This is tied to a series of posts I’ve done about rulings against DOGE firings.) OSC was then backed up by the Merit Systems Protection Board. Trump has been trying to fire basically everyone involved at both entities. And he’s been losing those cases. But this is obviously a win for the White House, though how much I’m not quite sure yet.

Will try to provide more context later. For now, see this update from the Post.

Here’s one of the more entertaining memos I’ve read recently coming out of the DOGE-tossed federal bureaucracy. This one’s from NIH, dated today and from the NIH Office of Defensive Counterintelligence and Personnel Security (ODCPS). And the gist is management is saying that while we’re busy making your lives hell, banning travel, communication and research reviews, defunding your projects and firing you one by one to drag out the torture, we need you to be extra vigilant because apparently foreign governments are trying to recruit you guys because you’re so upset.

I’m taking a bit of liberty with the language but not much.

The National Cancer Institute will be a no-show this year at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research, per an internal guidance memo dated March 4th, 2025 written by Kimberly Blair of the NCI Office of Communications.

Democrats need to be on the ground in states like Iowa, supporting local Democrats who can start building the case now against Sen. Joni Ernst (R) and other pro-Trump politicians, whoever ends up winning the right to challenge her as the Democratic nominee. I’m not saying Ernst will lose. It will be a very difficult race. Iowa has rapidly gone from a textbook swing state to a reliably red one in presidential elections. But people forget how rapidly things can change in a political climate in which visible, core political decisions by elected officials have tangible and deep impacts on ordinary people’s lives. People forget what happened between 2004 and 2006. They forget what happened between 2008 and 2010, though I think the first is the more relevant analog. There’s 2018 too. But I think we’ll find 2018 isn’t that true an analog.

As DOGE continues it’s federal government wilding spree, purportedly searching for examples of waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, we seem to have had another case of keyword search gone awry. One of the leases DOGE decided to cancel is the lease for Skeen-Whitlock Building in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a 90,000 square foot facility which manages the nation’s only storage area for DOD-created nuclear waste and the only operating deep geologic nuclear waste storage facility in the world.

Alas, due to scheduling conflicts, The Josh Marshall Podcast will be out tomorrow, Thursday, March 6, instead of our usual Wednesday drop.

In the meantime, the team is hitting the road, and we want to hear from you! Want us to visit your neck of the woods? Vote now.

It’s not the people who directly compile the economic statistics at the Commerce Department precisely. It’s an expert panel which advises those people on how to do it correctly. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fired them at the end of last month.

In case you didn’t hear the GSA today announced it’s going to sell off many if not all of the central buildings making up the headquarters of the American republic. Those buildings include FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC, the buildings which are the headquarters of the DOJ, HHS, DOL and more – more than 400 buildings across the country. Here’s the listing and here’s a Politico piece which gives an overview.

Late Update: A rather bizarre coda to this story. Or, perhaps not a coda, just an update. Several hours after GSA posted this and after the first round of press they removed all the DC buildings from the list. Given how unexplained and arbitrary the decision-making seems to be it seems entirely possible they’ll be back on the list soon. But at least for now we’re not selling the Department of Justice, at least in the sense of the literal building.

Even Later Update: And now the entire list is gone.