I’m trying to compile a list of all the town halls where GOP members of Congress got rocked by constituents this past week while they were on break. There are so many now that I can’t really write a whole post about each one. But I wanted to ask if you could send me links if there are examples where your member of Congress or Senator had a similar experience so I can add it to the list.

Diana Harshbarger (Tennessee) Friday townhall in Tennessee

Keith Self (Texas) Saturday (3/1) townhall (video) in Wylie.

Roger Marshall (Kansas) Saturday (3/1) townhall in Oakley

Glenn Grothman (Wisconsin) Friday morning town hall in Oshkosh

Scott Fitzgerald (Wisconsin) town hall in West Bend on Thursday.

Kevin Hern (Oklahoma) town hall in Glenpool on Thursday.

Cliff Bentz (Oregon) mutliple town halls in eastern Oregon this week.

Nick Begich (Alaska) confronted at airport last week.

Rich McCormick (Georgia) town hall in Roswell on Thursday.

Jay Obernolte (California) Yucca Valley townhall on Saturday.

Mark Alford (Missouri) Belton townhall on Monday.

If your Rep. or Senator got rocked at a townhall last week and he or she isn’t on our list please send us a link with the story. You can send us an email at talk at talkingpointsmemo dot com.

President Trump has abruptly fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Charles Q. Brown Jr., and is replacing him with a retired three star general, Dan Caine. This portends a future grave crisis as the President attempts to restructure the military into one personally loyal to him. Caine has not been a service chief or held a combatant command or been the head of the air forces of a combatant command. So basically he’s held none of the assignments which normally precedes elevation to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

I don’t know enough about the internal workings of the Joint Staff to know how big a problem that is in itself. But this is the President reaching far down the pecking order to someone who isn’t even on active duty in the military for the critical position not only as the chief military advisory to the President (the Chairman’s statutory role) but the key person at the contact point of civilian control over the military. Given Trump’s well-known impulses and ambitions, we must be very, very wary and suspicious of what understandings Trump has or believes he has with Caine.

This one is really, really bad.

Late Update: In its own way equally ominous, Trump tonight fired the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Among many other things it’s the military lawyers who determine what is a legal order and what’s not. If you’re planning to give illegal orders they are an obvious obstacle.

Important new Times story on issue I discussed here in the Ed Blog earlier this week: how the White House is using notifications to the Federal Register as a way to get around judges’ orders unfreezing NIH grant funding.

According to Politico, the White House has a new buzzword: Precision. Gone are the days — i.e., yesterday — when DOGE indiscriminately torched the livelihoods of federal employees in the tens of thousands. Now they’re indiscriminately torching the livelihoods of tens of thousands under the new branding of “precision,” or something like that. Politico runs with the new branding but is then forced to concede that the firings continuing pretty much exactly as they have been.

Following up on my post below about the beginnings of a visible backlash against Elon Musk’s wilding spree throughout the federal government, I remain very eager to hear from you about what you might be hearing from your senators and representatives. From the beginning of the DOGE wilding spree there’s been a disconnect between what Republican members of Congress are saying in DC and what they’re telling constituents back home. As I noted in today’s Backchannel, that cleavage has expanded dramatically over the last week. They’re hearing from angry constituents in their districts. Some are telling local press that Elon is out of control. Some are saying that while they’re fully in support of President Trump’s goals, they think Elon is going about it in the wrong way. (If you haven’t read today’s Backchannel it includes a lot of important context.) It’s time to ask members of Congress whether they support DOGE or not — as close to a yes or no question as one can get it. Every response you forward to me will help me greatly in charting the evolution of the public response to the DOGE attack on the American republic.

A wild email out this afternoon from Acting NIH Director Matthew J. Memoli. On its face it’s an “upward and onward, we’ll get through this” letter. But along the way you have these notes like “when this transition is behind us, NIH may look different.” Yep, probably so.

He then explains that Bobby Kennedy Jr. believes deeply in NIH’s mission. As I told an NIH employee a short time ago, the claim that Kennedy believes deeply in NIH’s mission is probably a bigger hit to morale than saying we’ll all be out of a job in a month. But not to fear, says Memoli: “We will have many opportunities to demonstrate our value to Secretary Kennedy in the coming weeks and months.”

Continue reading “New NIH Chief Sends We Love Bobby Email to NIH Staff” →