The Internal Revenue Service has now joined the list of federal agencies and offices experiencing life on the “DOGE” side. Two sources told TPM that a staffer affiliated with President Trump and Elon Musk’s controversial “efficiency” initiative left some bewildered and concerned on Thursday as they held their first meeting at the Washington headquarters of the tax agency.
Continue reading “Inside The ‘Bizarre’ Meeting Where DOGE Requested ‘Extensive System Access’ At IRS “Important Note for Federal Civil Servants
There are probationary employees who are new in government service and those who are labeled as probationary because of a job switch but who have continuous government service prior to their current job. If you are in that latter category, and if you are fired as a probationary employee in these category terminations taking place now, there is a good chance your termination was illegal. And it is illegal in a way that courts will vindicate. Obviously there are details and nuances about how this works. But if this applies to you you should at least speak with an attorney who knows this area of law. There’s a good chance you have a case and can receive compensation and/or reinstatement.
Needless to say I am not a lawyer and I am certainly not your lawyer. But I say the above after conferring with someone who has relevant expertise and experience in this area of law.
National Cancer Institute
This afternoon termination notices are going out to more than 300 employees at the National Cancer Institute. Locked out of access by the end of the day, four weeks paid leave, and that’s that.
NIH and Its Agencies Are Being Smothered
In recent days I have been inundated by reports out of HHS and particularly NIH (National Institutes of Health) and NCI (National Cancer Institute). I hope you will keep inundating me. You can find out how to contact me through encrypted channels in the footer of this post. Since it’s time consuming to dig in and confirm each individual thread of the story, which I’m in the process of doing, I want now to give you the broad picture. And the broad picture is bad. It’s nothing less than a very concerted attempt to shut down medical research across the United States.
Continue reading “NIH and Its Agencies Are Being Smothered”DOJ Enters The Darkest Period In Its Long History
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Worse Than The Saturday Night Massacre
The mass resignations at the Justice Department mark the most serious crisis in its history, a darker moment than its previous low point during Watergate.
By this point, you know the gist of what happened. The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York resigned Thursday afternoon rather than follow an order from Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to drop the criminal case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Under Attorney General Pam Bondi, the case was kicked back to Main Justice to do the dirty work of dismissing the Adams case, but at least five senior attorneys also resigned rather than participating in the nakedly political scheme.
I’d argue that yesterday’s Valentine’s Eve Massacre is worse than 1973’s Saturday Night Massacre, not out of some prurient obsession with ranking political scandals but as a way of highlighting the seriousness of what is happening right now.
Unlike the Saturday Night Massacre, when the top officials at the Justice Department held the line and resigned rather than carry out President Nixon’s corrupt order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, here the higher-ups have acquiesced to and are furthering the corrupt scheme. This time, the resignations are coming from lower down in the chain of command because Bondi and Bove are doing President Trump’s bidding rather than holding the line in defense of the law, DOJ guidelines, and their own ethical obligations as lawyers.
All of this is happening in the broader context of political purges at DOJ and FBI even as Bondi and the White House tear down the walls meant to protect the Justice Department from improper political influence. The bad things are all happening, and they’re happening now.
Who Resigned
- Danielle R. Sassoon, 38, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor who has been with the office since 2016. She has sterling credentials: Harvard undergrad, Yale law, and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She is a Federalist Society member who was named to the acting role just last month by the Trump administration to fill the post until Jay Clayton is confirmed.
- Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the department’s Criminal Division who previously had been in the Public Integrity Section;
- John Keller, the acting head of the Public Integrity Section;
- Rob Heberle, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section;
- Jenn Clarke, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section;
- Marco Palmieri, a prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section.
The Thuggery
Bove’s letter responding to Sassoon’s resignation is as dastardly and villainous as anything I’ve ever seen come out of the Justice Department. It’s comic book villain material. Among the snarling remarks and acts of retaliation:
- Bove put on administrative leave at least two other line prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys office in Manhattan who had worked the Adams case, claiming without basis that the entire prosecution was politically motivated (improbably by a Democratic president against a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city).
- Bove threatened Sassoon and the line prosecutors with internal investigation, by both the attorney general’s bogus “weaponization” group and the Office of Professional Responsibility.
- Bove suggested that Sassoon’s oath to uphold the Constitution was superseded by “the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General.
In her letter, Sassoon had revealed: (i) Bove cut her out of his negotiations with Adams’ lawyers of what she alleged was a quid pro quo arrangement; (ii) scotched one of the prosecutors from taking notes of the meeting with Adams’ lawyers; (iii) made his decision to drop the case despite knowing that a superseding indictment was in the works to add additional obstruction charges against Adams.
MUST READ: The Dueling DOJ Letters
Feb. 12: Danielle Sassoon’s letter to Bondi
Feb. 13: Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s response letter to Sassoon
The Other DOJ Travesty
In another flagrant disregard of the law, Attorney General Pam Bondi gave an affirmative green light to Google and Apple to ignore the plain language of the statutory TikTok ban upheld by the Supreme Court.
Emil Bove’s Dirty Secret: He Investigated Jan. 6
Former co-workers from Emil Bove’s brief time as an aggressive investigator of Jan. 6 spill the tea.
TPM Exclusive
TPM’s Josh Kovensky on the judicial branch scrambling to limit the spillover effects from Trump’s executive branch rampage on its own operations.
Will The Courts Stand Firm Against Trump Lawlessness?
Among the at least 70 lawsuits against the Trump administration and 14 court orders blocking executive actions, we’re tracking the most important rulings:
- USAID: In the first USAID case, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols extended his order blocking the Trump administration from pulling workers worldwide off the job.
- USAID: In a second USAID case, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ordered an end to the spending freeze.
- Trans Care: U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson of Maryland blocked Trump’s executive order banning the federal government from offering gender-affirming care for trans kids.
The Purges
- Government-wide: Some 200,000 government workers on probationary status are being purged.
- CFPB: Dozens of workers fired in after-hours blitz.
- CFPB: Acting head Russell Vought established a “tip line” to snitch on financial regulators who are still doing their jobs despite a White House “stand down” order.
- U.S. Forest Service: Some 3,400 federal employees still within their probationary period purged across every level of the agency beginning yesterday.
Trump II Clown Show
- The Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the sole Republican to vote no.
- The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Kash Patel‘s nomination as FBI director despite his potential perjury problem.
The Corruption
WSJ: How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza
‘You’ve Blown a Hole in the Family’
The NYT goes inside Rupert Murdoch’s succession drama after obtaining some 3,000 documents from a court case in Nevada.
Quote Of The Day
“Hegseth is going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job. But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line. I don’t know who wrote the speech — it is the kind of thing Tucker Carlson could have written, and Carlson is a fool.”–Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), lamenting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table and saying it cannot return to its pre-2014 borders
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Enjoy your long weekend. Morning Memo will be back Tuesday.
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Monday Changed Everything: Gov Hochul Needs to Remove Eric Adams from Office
Events in the Trump DOJ-Eric Adams story have moved very quickly this afternoon. Thank you so much to the source who flagged to me the quite public but unremarked on information that allowed me to be one of the few public voices noting SDNY appeared to be defying the Trump DOJ’s demand to drop the charges against Mayor Adams. I will return later to the stunning revelation contained in Danielle Sassoon’s letter to AG Pam Bondi in which she reveals that she witnessed Emil Bove negotiating an explicit quid-pro-quo in which Adams agreed to provide political and policy assistance to Donald Trump in exchange for dropping the criminal charges against him. In that same meeting Bove reprimanded a member of Sassoon’s team who was memorializing the meeting in written notes and had those notes confiscated. That’s consciousness of guilt if I ever saw it. But for now I want to discuss the tenure of Adams as mayor of New York and whether Gov. Kathy Hochul should remove him from office, something the state constitution gives her the power to do.
Continue reading “Monday Changed Everything: Gov Hochul Needs to Remove Eric Adams from Office”Fed Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Order Targeting Gender Affirming Care For Trans Youth
A federal district court judge issued a temporary restraining order Thursday afternoon blocking the enforcement of Donald Trump’s sweeping Jan. 28 executive order that sought to shut down gender affirming medical care for trans youth under the age of 19 nationwide.
Judge Brendan Hurson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, a Biden nominee, issued the decision from the bench earlier this afternoon and a written order is due out soon.
Continue reading “Fed Judge Temporarily Blocks Trump’s Order Targeting Gender Affirming Care For Trans Youth”EXCLUSIVE: Judicial Branch Scrambles To Limit Spillover From Trump’s Executive Branch Rampage
The judicial branch acknowledged to its workforce on Thursday afternoon some of the impacts from Donald Trump’s executive orders and said that it was working to limit the effects.
Continue reading “EXCLUSIVE: Judicial Branch Scrambles To Limit Spillover From Trump’s Executive Branch Rampage”D’oh!: Musky Clown Show Temporarily Disrupts Firings at TTS
More clown show breaking this afternoon out of TTS, the in-show tech consultancy housed within GSA. I told you last night that the new leadership had started firing people yesterday starting with a few dozen probationers — people in their first year on the job who are easier to fire under Civil Service law. But apparently the new bosses are still learning how to do things, most specifically, how to fire people. Yesterday the fired staffers found out about their terminations when they were summoned to hastily arranged meetings in which they were verbally told they were fired. But then people started to notice that the formal letters of termination they were told to expect weren’t showing up in their inboxes. And they couldn’t easily ask their supervisors what was up since their supervisors hadn’t been looped in on the fact that members of their teams had been fired in the first place.
So what happened?
It seems that the new bosses got down to firing people before they learned how you fire people. Finally Thomas Shedd, the Musk associate who was appointed as the new head of TTS, sent a message this afternoon to the whole team that it turns out … well, they’re not quite fired yet. “We don’t yet have the go-ahead from HR,” a presumably somewhat sad-sack Shedd Slacked colleagues a bit after 2 this afternoon.
Defiance in New York
The acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, has submitted her resignation to Attorney General Pam Bondi, an implicit refusal to seek the dismissal of charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, as Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered her to do on Monday. I’ve noted several times over recent days that despite that order, which most people — including me, before this was flagged to me — thought ended the matter, the dismissal hadn’t actually been carried out. A motion to dismiss should have shown up in the trial docket. But it wasn’t. And, as I noted, that suggested they couldn’t find someone in the New York office (SDNY) to carry it out.
Now we have our answer.
Continue reading “Defiance in New York”