I 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.

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.

They’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.

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 …

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.

Two days ago, I wrote about a pattern operating largely under the radar in the President’s war against higher education. We know about the general grant freezes on about half a dozen elite universities. Then there are countless other grant terminations across a much larger group of universities. One of the complexities of this story is that there are so many different versions of cancellations and terminations going on, it’s hard to figure out which is which. It’s just as hard deciphering to what extent the differences even matter. There are ones tied to prohibited words and concepts (DEI, transgender); there are ones tied to targeted universities; others are terminated on generic efficiency grounds; others are canceled for no clear reason. Are these categories even meaningful or is that all just more smoke and mirrors and distraction?

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Trump administration’s muteness on abortion (so far), their losses in recent Alien Enemies Act cases and the sweet, sweet downfall of eagle Ed Martin.

A short time ago, President Trump announced in the Oval Office that he is pulling the nomination of Ed Martin as U.S. attorney for D.C.

Saying he was “disappointed” that Martin’s nomination foundered in the Senate, Trump floated the possibility of bringing Martin into the administration – and specifically into the Justice Department – in some other way.

So we may not be rid of Martin quite yet.