Earlier this afternoon I told you how the GSA staffers who run the Sandra Day O’Connor Federal Courthouse in Phoenix were abruptly fired with no warning or notification to anyone who works in the building. A bit later this afternoon I was able to speak to Debra Lucas, the District Court Executive and Clerk of the Court. To explain that job title Lucas is the senior judicial branch official at the courthouse in terms of the administration of the function of the courthouse. What Lucas told me basically squared with what sources had already told and which I shared with you in that earlier post.

They got no advance warning that this was going to happen. And they still haven’t gotten any explanation of what’s happening. “We’re still waiting for guidance,” Lucas told me. When I asked, guidance from whom? she said the GSA.

In Phoenix, the federal courthouse is named after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor: it’s the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse. The General Services Administration (GSA) is the agency charged with running the building. The GSA is currently controlled by DOGE and they’re the ones currently breaking leases on federal offices around the country and trying to sell off, at least as of earlier this week, hundreds of federal buildings including the Departments of Justice, Labor and Health and Human Services.

The Phoenix courthouse houses the judicial branch mostly. But the GSA is still in charge of running the building. So court staff were surprised earlier this week when they found out that all the GSA employees who run the building had been fired. None of the judicial offices, I’m told, had been notified. They only realized what was happening when they noticed some members of the building staff crying.

This article from the Post is just one jaw-dropper after another. Musk met yesterday with Republican senators and then the House GOP caucus. Notionally it’s about communication. The folks on the Hill are getting a bit unhappy there’s a “lack of communication” about DOGE plans to shut down departments and unilaterally rewrite the federal budget. The Republicans want more details about what Musk’s doing, which — setting aside the infinite absurdities of this moment — would seem reasonable enough. They’re Congress after all. They’re literally in charge of this stuff. Read this graf …

Musk told a group of Republican senators in a closed-door lunch that he wanted to set up a direct line for them when they have questions, allowing them to get a near-instant response to their concerns, senators said. Some senators were given Musk’s phone number during Wednesday’s meeting, and the entrepreneur said he would “create a system where members of Congress can call some central group” to get problematic cuts reversed quickly, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said.

There’s a budget, appropriated money that defines what the government does and provides the money to do it. But Musk, absent any visibility even for much of the executive branch, is simply changing everything. But wait … he’s going to set up a system where Republican members of Congress can call and ask to “get problematic cuts reversed quick.”

What the fuck?

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.