A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Authoritarian Watch
In an alarming new executive order, President Trump ordered the security clearances revoked for the lawyers at the prominent Covington & Burling law firm who are representing former Special Counsel Jack Smith – the Trump prosecutor who needs legal representation precisely to defend himself from Trump’s promised attacks.
Trump also ordered all federal government contracts with Covington & Burling ended, though it doesn’t appear to currently have any such contracts.
Covington & Burling has been providing pro bono legal services to Smith since last fall, presumably around the time it became apparent that Trump would retake the White House and have the chance to exact the retribution he has promised.
The language of the executive order is a little fuzzy on whether the security clearances are to be revoked immediately (my emphasis):
I hereby direct the Attorney General and all other relevant heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to immediately take steps consistent with applicable law to suspend any active security clearances held by Peter Koski and all members, partners, and employees of Covington & Burling LLP who assisted former Special Counsel Jack Smith during his time as Special Counsel, pending a review and determination of their roles and responsibilities, if any, in the weaponization of the judicial process.
What that review looks like, who conducts it, whether it’s one of the tasks of the “Weaponization Working Group” that Attorney General Pam Bondi has convened all remain unclear.
What is clear is that Trump’s retribution against those who have crossed him includes trying to deprive them of the means and tools to defend themselves against his attacks. He wants their arms pinned behind them so he can swing freely with no repercussions for him or his abusive conduct.
Trump Loss #1: Judge Orders USAID Payments Unfrozen
In a big development, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali of Washington, D.C., gave the Trump administration until 11:59 p.m. ET today to resume hundreds of million of dollars in USAID payments that had remained frozen despite his earlier order. The Trump administration immediately appealed the ruling.
Quote Of The Day
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali: “I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you. Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before Feb. 13?”
DOJ lawyer: “I’m not in a position to answer that.”
–a frustrated judge during a telephone hearing over whether the Trump administration has been ignoring his order to unfreeze foreign aid
Trump Loss #2: Judge Blocks OMB Spending Freeze
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan converted her temporary restraining order into an appealable preliminary injunction extending her block of the OMB’s purported spending freeze. In a strongly worded opinion, the judge declined to give the Trump administration “a presumption of good faith,” citing that notorious tweet from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claiming that the administration hadn’t really rescinded the spending freeze after it told the judge that it had.
Trump Loss #3: Judge Accuses Trump Of ‘Nullification’
U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead of Seattle blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order pausing refugee admissions, saying that while the president has substantial discretion in this area, Trump’s directive appeared to amount to a “nullification” of federal law.
The World’s Richest Authoritarian
With three judges issuing important rulings yesterday (see above) blocking key elements of President Trump’s opening salvo of executive orders and spending freezes, Elon Musk went on a rampage against the federal judiciary:
Elon Musk has posted at least six times tonight calling for the impeachment of federal judges who rule against the Trump Administration. pic.twitter.com/FOYjb5HqX2
— Tom Dreisbach (@TomDreisbach) February 26, 2025
IMPORTANT
The Merit Systems Protection Board and the Office of Special Counsel are making a genuine effort to perform their roles despite the attack on them by President Trump:
Some federal employees fired by the Trump administration while in their probationary periods have at least temporarily won back their jobs, a federal board that hears appeals from civil servants has ruled.
The Merit Systems Protection Board has granted a 45-day stay requested by another independent agency, the Office of Special Counsel, which had deemed the Trump administration’s mass firings as likely unlawful. The case involved six federal workers, each at different agencies, who must now be placed back into their positions.
The Purges
- VA: The Department of Veterans Affairs dismissed more than 1,400 additional probationary employees on Monday evening.
- NYT: Why ‘Probationary’ Employees Are a Target in Federal Job Cuts
- SSA: TPM’s Josh Marshall: Trump’s acting administrator of the Social Security Administration has abolished its Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Division and put all of its employees on leave.
- The next wave of the purge is underway, with the Trump administration explicitly calling them layoffs, which triggers certain protections and protocols for workers.
DOGE Watch: Mystery Only Kinda Solved
After days of refusing to answer the question and leaving DOJ lawyers twisting in the wind, the White House finally identified the current administrator of DOGE, a seemingly hapless low-level government employee reported to be on vacation in Mexico this week.
What remains unanswered is when Amy Gleason became the DOGE administrator and who, if anyone, served in that role before her:
I’m not saying it’s an elaborate ruse to disguise that (as President Trump has repeatedly said but which his administration has denied to courts) Elon Musk was running DOGE, but I’m also not not saying that.
In other DOGE developments:
- NYT: DOGE Quietly Deletes the 5 Biggest Spending Cuts It Celebrated Last Week
- More than 20 employees of the legit forerunner of DOGE jointly resigned rather than participate in Elon Musk’s effort to “dismantle critical public services.”
Unfettered Corruption
WSJ: The Trump Staffers Who Get Paid by Private Clients
House GOP Barely Gets Its Act Together
A crazy sequence of events last night in the House as Speaker Mike Johnson sent everyone packing for the night after he failed to muster enough votes to bring his big budget resolution to a vote – then quickly reversed himself after picking up the needed votes and summoning everyone back. It passed on a narrow 217-215 party line vote, and means Republicans have managed to get their skinny-no-tax-cuts version through the Senate and the mammoth tax-cuts-included version through the House. Now the real work begins to square the many circles they are still juggling, including massive cuts to Medicaid. Meanwhile, in related news, the clock is still ticking to fund the government past March 14.
House GOP Hightails It For The Hills
House GOP leaders are reportedly urging their members to stop holding town halls in light of the blowback some of them have been getting back home.
White House Will Pick White House Press Pool
The White House announced that it will now decide which reporters serve in the press pool:
The move was an apparent response to comments from a federal judge Monday in the Associated Press’ lawsuit against the Trump White House for retaliating against its failures to use “Gulf of America” in its new stories by denying it access to the president.
Let’s Check In On Trump’s DOJ …
- TPM’s Josh Kovensky: The Trump DOJ has hired as a senior adviser in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General a former Oregon state judge who was once suspended.
- TPM’s Khaya Himmelman: New FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has long pushed conspiracy theories about an “irredeemably corrupt” FBI in need of a purge.
Meh, What’s A Couple Of Grenades And An Assault Rifle?
The Trump Justice Department continues to interpret the President’s Jan. 6 act of clemency dangerously broadly, taking the position in one case that it covers a conviction related to an illegal firearm, grenades, and classified information found during the FBI’s search of the man’s home. The man is serving a seven-year sentence on those charges, but the Justice Department wants him immediately released.
Kicking Canada For The Fun Of It
Financial Times: “Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand — according to people familiar with his efforts inside the administration.”
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Frist!
Another day of face eating leopards !
WH Press Secretary: “Amy Gleason has been the DOGE administrator for quite some time, I believe several weeks, maybe a month, I’m not actually sure of the specific timeline…”
Translation: “I’m not actually sure which lie I’m supposed to say right now.”
First and most importantly, Timothy Snyder has a must read post today:
Second, my thoughts this morning for what they’re worth:
For all the vaunted bragging about how the American Revolution and the founding of the nation, even with its flawed Constitution, were the children of the Enlightenment and the triumphs of rational thought, any objective observer of American history, and especially of its current politics must concede that the two most durable characteristics of the American populace are ignorance and apathy. Tragically, these flaws are exacerbated by the willful pride with which their possessors hold these fatal impediments to the bettering of their own lives. The ignorant believe they are the holders of an higher truth than science and objective, documented facts or even what their own eyes see and own ears hear. The apathetic believe they are superior to “dirty” politics and futile civic engagement. Most of our nation’s decades have been a time of ignorance and apathy, times of, at best, stagnation when not a time of regression and backsliding. But there have been “bursts” of real progress, usually in response to a great crisis or foreign threat, when the nation needed all of its human resources to survive. The longest was the New Deal which flourished from 1933 to 1981. But even that time was stained by the virulent disgraces of Jim Crow, McCarthyism, and the violence against the Civil Rights movement. And always through today, the racism, the misogyny, the homophobia the religious bigotry, the ineradicable pride filled ignorance and apathy rising to dominate once again.
Bur for it all, the progress has been real. Slavery abolished. The voting franchise expanded to include all native born and naturalized citizens. Astonishing scientific advances in all the disciplines especially medicine and technology. We carry in our pockets computing power 1960’s NASA engineers would have died for. Life spans almost doubled and the highest standards of living in history.
We will endure and survive this period of regression which will birth a crisis that will light the fuse of the next burst of progress. Our children will live it, and if it happens soon enough, so will we.
And in good news, at least for me, my SSA check has been electronically deposited.