Hello there. We’re back after a week away.
Administration Explains to Court How It Has Weaponized Federalism
It’s becoming a cliche, but this administration has the kind of scandal that took up years of the Nixon administration on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis.
The latest emerges in a New York Times article flagging a court filing in a dispute between the federal government and researchers who work on grant-funded projects. In a stipulation, the administration admits that funds for various Biden-era clean energy projects were withheld from blue states, and blue states alone.
“With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing Senators (‘Blue State’ grants),” it confesses.
Like much in this administration, the magnitude of the scandal is deadened somewhat by the fact that the White House Office of Management and Budget, under the direction of Russ Vought, has made a practice of finding creative and novel ways to impound congressionally appropriated funding, a topic TPM’s Emine Yücel has been diligently chronicling. Back in October 2025, Vought heavily insinuated what was going on with this specific funding by tweeting “$8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” adding that the projects “are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”
Elsewhere, the administration has withheld funds with the thinnest of justifications. Just last week, for example, the Trump administration announced it was withholding $1 billion in Medicaid funds from California and Minnesota, alleging fraud.
But the stipulation filed in court earlier this month contains no such fig leaf. It makes what is going on explicit. ”The inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State,” it says.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MA) called it an “imbecilic deep betrayal of America.”
“The illegally impounded funds must be restored and released immediately to the blue states,” he added.
Maine Gets Its Democratic Nominee
Maine has, as expected, nominated Troy Jackson as its Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate. He emerged from Saturday’s pop-up Democratic convention with 566 of 571 delegates voting for him.
- Jackson, who campaigned with Graham Platner as he ran for governor, shares some of his politics and makes a similar, populist appeal to working-class voters. But he is not a carbon copy of him. He is a logger and former Republican. He also served as Maine Senate president.
- Also unlike pre-implosion Platner, he is less of a star in our attention economy. Put another way, some Maine Democrats are worried he lacks the charisma that boosted Platner’s campaign.
- In appearances this month, Jackson has focused squarely on talking about defeating Sen. Susan Collins.
- That might be enough. As Kate Riga noted last week, one University of New Hampshire poll fielded earlier this month puts Jackson ahead of Collins by three points.
Tabs
ICE plans to target Haitians — including in Springfield, Ohio, the target of the Trump administration’s campaign smears about people eating pets — now that the Supreme Court has cleared the way for the administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status status for hundreds of thousands of people, CBS News reports. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and some state-level Republicans are warning of a significant impact on the economy from losing so many workers, the New York Times reports.
Brazil denied visas to Trump State Department officials, fearing they were coming to undermine the country’s elections, the Washington Post reports.
Woman of the Hour
It’s Laura Loomer, who, after a visit to Ukraine, is now conceding she was “bamboozled by Russian propaganda” and “came to believe a lot of untrue things about Ukraine.”
Are We at War?
Yes, and according to a report in Axios, top military advisors believe our bombing campaign around the Straight of Hormuz “has reached the limit of its effectiveness”
Under a working administration this would be the kind of thing admitted by a defendant in a criminal probe, not professed as a good thing.
Fill in the blank with your favorite social-media driven bias.
At first I expected this to speak to the war being waged inside the United States of America.
We are united aren’t we?