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”Under Cover Of ‘Shock And Awe,’ Trump Takes Concrete Steps To Hobble Government
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.
Follow along with TPM’s live coverage:
Update
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.
BREAKING: Musk Takeover of OPM (Federal HR Office)
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)”What To Know About How Trump’s Funding Freeze Screwed Up Medicaid Portals In All 50 States
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”Trump Purports To Fire Two Democratic EEOC Commissioners
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”Trump Sparks Constitutional Crisis, Seizing Budget Authority from Congress
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”Trump Takes His Corrupt Retribution Against The Justice Department
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨FIVE ALARM FIRE🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
President Trump’s corrupt retribution against the Justice Department is now fully underway, with a series of moves over the past 24 hours that in any other era would be the defining political and legal story of the age. Today, it didn’t even make the front page of the New York Times.
- Trump’s acting attorney general sacked the career prosecutors who worked on the Trump prosecutions. Among those let go were Molly Gaston, J.P. Cooney, Anne McNamara, and Mary Dohrmann, NBC News reported.
- Trump’s acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., a political lackey from Missouri, launched an investigation of the prosecutors who brought the criminal charges against hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters.
- DOJ’s most senior career official was sidelined by being moved to a department backwater. Separately, the DOJ official who oversaw the prosecution of public corruption, who had previously been reassigned to the same backwater, resigned rather than continue in a reduced role.
The corrupt wholesale cashiering of career prosecutors who worked on the Mar-a-Lago and Jan. 6 cases against Trump was the most egregious of the corrupt acts, in defiant violation of the civil service rules and the rule of law. But the most absurd development was acting U.S. Attorney Ed Martin’s purported investigation into why DOJ had pursued obstruction charges against Jan. 6 rioters. While the Roberts Court ultimately cut prosecutors legs out from under them, the obstruction charge was ratified by multiple federal trial judges and the DC Circuit before the Supreme Court held otherwise.
If you were taking a measured approach to see how things played out once Trump took office, the waiting is over. It’s a five-alarm fire at the Justice Department. Ousting independent career prosecutors is just Step 1, a prelude to Step 2, which is using the Justice Department to protect Trump and his administration from accountability for their wrongdoing. Step 3 turns DOJ into a weapon against anyone who Trump perceives as less than fully loyal and obedient.
The retribution is being exacted precisely as promised. As Joyce Vance put it: “The real witch hunt is here.”
Jack Smith Lawyers Up
Former Special Counsel Jack Smith has retained private counsel: Peter Koski of Covington & Burling.
Stewart Rhodes Is Free To Roam The Capitol
A federal judge in DC lifted an earlier order barring Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes from coming to DC or visiting the Capitol with prior court approval, agreeing with the Justice Department that Trump’s commutation of Rhodes canceled any post-sentence supervision.
Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Killed In Police Shooting
“An Indiana man who was recently pardoned for his participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was shot and killed during a traffic stop by a sheriff’s deputy Sunday.”–NBC News
Quote Of The Day
“This raises an existential threat with respect to the primary independent oversight function in the federal government. We have preserved the independence of inspectors general by making them not swing with every change in political party.”–Mark Greenblatt, the Trump-appointed inspector general for the Interior Department, on the Friday night purge of inspectors general across government, including himself
Destruction Watch
- OMB: White House pauses on all federal grants, loans and other financial-assistance programs pending further review. That last part is key: Trump is using the paralyzing freezes of various government operations to take extra-legal control of the decision-making over what is spent and how it is spent.
- USAID: “The Trump administration has cleared out much of the leadership of the U.S. Agency for International Development, placing dozens of career officials on administrative leave Monday after accusing the agency of trying to ‘circumvent’ President Donald Trump’s executive order freezing all foreign aid, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said.”–WaPo
- OPM: Schedule F is back with a vengeance.
Pointless Waste And Destruction
“The Trump administration has instructed organizations in other countries to stop disbursing H.I.V. medications purchased with U.S. aid, even if the drugs have already been obtained and are sitting in local clinics.”–NYT (emphasis added)
Sorry, It’s Time To Learn About The Impoundment Act
Let me get you started with Steve Vladeck’s latest: The Impoundment Crisis of 2025.
U.S. Gov’t Used To Perpetuate The Othering
- Transgender Americans: In a new executive order, President Trump used demeaning fundamentalist Christian-inflected language that portends a purge of transgender people from the military:
Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.
- Black Americans: The Trump administration has barred the State Department from commemorating Black history month.
- Non-Confederate Americans: As he arrived at the Pentagon for his first business day on the job as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth want out of his way to revert to using the former name for the Army base in North Carolina:
Pete Hegseth, in his first remarks as defense secretary, refers to Fort Liberty as "Fort Bragg"
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 27, 2025 at 9:22 AM
[image or embed]
Pure Chicken Shit
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) assured Pete Hegseth’s ex-sister-in-law that if she came forward with her damaging testimony against him it could convince senators to oppose his nomination, the WSJ reports. She came forward and then Tillis cast the deciding vote to confirm Hegseth.
They Know What It Meant
Elon Musk’s “My heart goes out to you” takes off as ironic far-right catchphrase.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
Big Picture
Going to do a post on this later this morning. But President Trump’s decision, revealed overnight, to unilaterally and illegally shut down broad swaths of the federal government is a full scale constitutional crisis. Democrats power to stop him is very limited. But there’s one cudgel on the table. Republicans have been begging for their help to raise the debt ceiling this spring. Because they can’t control their caucuses well enough to do it themselves, despite having the votes. The minimum requirement has to be: no assistance without the President’s agreement to follow the law and the Constitution.
Sen. Peters Retiring
Minor scoop here. Hearing that Sen. Gary Peters (D) of Michigan will announce his retirement this morning at 9:30 AM. That means an open seat election in 2026.