Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic presidential candidate abruptly turned Donald Trump supporter, was grilled Wednesday by Democrats on his anti-vaccine activism and peddling of public health conspiracy theories.
Republicans were more interested in getting the HHS secretary nominee to make mifepristone, the abortion drug, less accessible.
Catch up with our live coverage here:
The Justice Department further confirmed on Wednesday that it’s beholden to the new President by moving to dismiss the prosecutions against two Trump employees charged alongside him in the Mar-a-Lago records case.
Continue reading “Trump’s DOJ Moves To Drop Case Against Mar-a-Lago Records Cronies”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Amid chaos over everything from Medicaid access to scientific research to HIV treatment abroad, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., put a hold on the Trump administration’s abrupt spending freeze.
In a sign that the White House power grab had exceeded its reach, it was forced to issue a follow-up memo midday that purported but mostly failed to offer clarity.
At heart, the move was not about spending but about control. The White House press secretary gave away the game when she told reporters that the door was open for departments and agencies to make direct appeals for exemptions from the freeze to Russell Vought, Trump’s yet-to-be-confirmed nominee to run OMB.
It’s a practical impossibility for the White House to directly approve every expenditure in the vast federal government, but Trump’s transactional orientation to power is as clear as it is unconstitutional: Every government service, benefit, and contract is a thing of value that he’ll dangle as inducement for things he wants.
An Elon Musk-inspired mass email to federal government workers has been badly mischaracterized as a buyout or severance package. Setting aside for these purposes the broader questions of presidential authority to make such an offer, it appears best described as an exemption from Trump’s return-to-the-office edict.
If you confirm before Feb. 6 that you’re resigning, then you can continue to work from home and receive pay and benefits until Sept. 30, at which point your resignation takes effect.
The email predictably set off mass confusion, with departments and agencies in some cases sending follow-up emails to confirm that the bizarro email from the Musk-saturated OPM was real.
The best rundown comes via political scientist Don Moynihan.
Former Twitter data scientist offers government workers some of her lessons learned from Elon Musk wrecking Twitter:
I’ve spent about 2-3 hours each day on calls or chats with my US gov friends. Here’s an anonymized recap of what’s going on. First, I am so very sorry that they are living our last year at Twitter. I never wanted to think about that time again, and I hope my advice is helpful. 1/
— Rumman Chowdhury (@ruchowdh.bsky.social) January 29, 2025 at 7:30 AM
But in a remark during her first briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked whether the president had authorized the firings, said the firings were tied to a memo issued by the White House personnel office.
“This was a memo that went out by the presidential personnel office and the president is the leader of this White House, so yes,” Leavitt said in response.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has revoked the security detail and clearance for retired Gen. Mark Milley, making him the latest high-level official to face retribution from President Donald Trump for going against him.
Hegseth also directed the Pentagon’s acting inspector general to launch an investigation into whether the former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair upended the chain of command, which could lead to the four-star general getting demoted to three-star rank.
This one clip captures the tone and tenor of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first press briefing (although this exchange on Medicaid was pretty indicative too):
Reporter: Could you please clarify what the military did with the California water per Trump's social media post? Karoline Leavitt: "The water has been turned back on in California." Reporter: What was the military's role? Where did the water come from? Leavitt: "The water was turned on."
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 1:56 PM
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NYT: White House Press Secretary Makes Steely and Unflinching Debut
Dana Milbank: The Trump White House has no idea what the Trump White House just did
Matt Glassman with a solid thread explaining the Impoundment Control Act and consequences of the Trump White House’s insane expansive assertion of presidential authority:
Ok. Impoundment. Some links to relevant authorities and commentary, and then thoughts of my own. What Trump is proposing potentially amounts to an upending of the separation of powers, and while that's not *inherently* bad, in this case it's bad. Very bad. 1/ 🧵
— Matt Glassman (@mattglassman312.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 10:41 AM
TPM will have live coverage from the Hill of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s confirmation hearing for secretary of Health and Human Service beginning at 10 a.m. ET
In advance of the confirmation hearing, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late president, sent a scathing letter to senators warning of her cousin’s manifest unfitness for a Cabinet position. Then she recorded herself reading the letter. I’ve never seen such a withering denunciation from such a placid public person:
Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary
— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025
This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp
Talia Lavin updates Dorothy Thompson’s iconic “Who Goes Nazi?” for the digital age. It’s the best thing you’ll read all day.
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One of the features of Donald Trump’s flood-the-zone tactics is not only to overwhelm opponents but to spark a mix of overwhelm, angst and confusion that drives those opponents to fall into arguing amongst themselves. If you can’t meaningfully strike back at the instigator, that ravaged energy has to seek release somewhere and it erupts in doom-scrolling, competitive doomerism and most importantly infighting over who’s responsible for what the instigator is doing. If you can’t lash out at the boss you kick the dog. I’m as susceptible to all of this as anyone. But I would be lying if I didn’t confess that I find those responses eternally exhausting down to the depths of my soul. I’ll just share my own thoughts.
Continue reading “Calm Amidst the Storm”Amid a flurry of executive actions meant to demoralize his opponents and flex his supposed “mandate” from a historically narrow election win, Donald Trump has begun the real work of neutering the government and punishing his enemies.
In the first 24 hours of his presidency, that has entailed a vengeful stripping of security clearances, firing top immigration court officials and abruptly shutting down an app tens of thousands of legal immigrants were using to set up appointments for work permits and asylum requests.
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As of late Tuesday evening the administration seems to be rolling out a series of “waivers,” “exceptions” and “oh, that’s not what we meants” as they realize what is funded by grants and the bad news stories proliferate. PEPFAR is now in the clear under a new “if it makes people die” waiver.
There’s a growing list of similar examples.
Meanwhile the Musk-inflected “buy out” offer seems to promise a level of “buy out” specifically prohibited by federal law and a close reading of the offer actually may require “resigned” federal workers to earn out their “buy out” money by continuing to work — even as the money can’t legally be paid out. It’s complicated.
This is a paywalled article at Wired. But it makes a pretty good case that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is now basically being run at its highest levels by people installed by and working with Elon Musk. In other words, “DOGE” seems to be calling the shots at OPM, even though it’s run by people who aren’t even federal employees. Most of these people appear to come from Musk’s various companies. Wired declined to publish the names of two of the people because of their age. One graduated from high school last summer.
Some of this is already known. The nominee to run the agency, Scott Kupor, is a partner at the Andreessen/Horowitz VC firm. They’re aligned with Musk politically. So that’s consistent with the rest of the story. But it seems the upper echelons of the agency has already been stocked with a mix of Musk’s people and Republican operatives, notwithstanding the fact that this is a federal agency which is usually made up almost entirely of career staff.
Continue reading “BREAKING: Musk Takeover of OPM (Federal HR Office)”In the wake of mass chaos and reports of Medicaid payment portals being shut down in states across the U.S., a federal judge on Tuesday evening temporarily paused a portion of the Trump administration directive to halt the disbursement of federal loans and grants.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the Trump administration to not block any federal funds that were already locked in to be disbursed until Feb. 3, temporarily maintaining the status quo while the constitutionality of the Trump move is assessed in court.
After OMB Acting Director Matthew Vaeth issued the memo that sparked panic and confusion Monday announcing a supposed “temporary pause” on federal grants, loans and other financial assistance programs — a move that my colleague Josh Marshall and others have described as creating a wide-ranging constitutional crisis and a “unilateral government shutdown on steroids” — the OMB was forced to issue another directive by midday Tuesday claiming it had been misunderstood.
Continue reading “What To Know About How Trump’s Funding Freeze Screwed Up Medicaid Portals In All 50 States”President Donald Trump fired two Democratic commissioners on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission late on Monday night, likely violating legal statute.
Continue reading “Trump Purports To Fire Two Democratic EEOC Commissioners”So I write the following with the caveat that everything in the unfolding Trump administration is cloaked in secrecy and uncertain from one moment to the next. But overnight President Trump kicked off, what can only be called both a wide-ranging constitutional crisis, and also very likely a fiscal crisis. He has unilaterally halted – as of yesterday evening, according to an executive memorandum first reported by independent journalist Marisa Kabas – all “grant, loan and federal assistance programs” for at least 90 days. This appears to include everything the federal government does beyond the salaries of federal employees, direct checks to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries and the US military. Mainstream media journalists are calling this “temporary” or a “pause.” But that’s like saying you’re “temporarily” shutting down Congress or “pausing” elections. “Temporary” isn’t a meaningful term in this case. It’s hard to think through everything affected. Already the halt to USAID budgets has cut off funding for the prison guards holding 9,500 ISIS prisoners in northeastern Syria, according to Syria expert Charles Lister. Cancer research, major parts of every state’s budget, the grants that keep the local daycare center running. This hits basically everything.
Continue reading “Trump Sparks Constitutional Crisis, Seizing Budget Authority from Congress”
