Josh Marshall

 Have a tip? Send it Here!
Josh Marshall is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TPM.

The Purported DEI Rollback

One more point to keep an eye on. You’ve likely seen that the White House is doing a series of executive orders and sending letters to employees demanding “DEI” be rooted out of agencies. News organizations have mostly used this terminology. But whatever you think about DEI, this is deeply and intentionally misleading. This gives the impression that they’re clawing back various #MeToo and post-George Floyd government policies. But they’re actually repealing a host of executive orders and departmental policies going all the way back to the Johnson administration. A lot of it is very basic employment non-discrimination rules and contracting non-discrimination rules.

For the purposes of this post I’m not trying to get into what “DEI” is or whether it’s good or bad. I’m focused on this more general point that under the pretext of a DEI rollback they’re basically stripping out non-discrimination policies across the government.

Creeping RFKJrism at HHS

It’s still uncertain precisely how long the duration will be, but we’re getting fast emerging information that there appears to be an indefinite halt on the various meetings, review panels and so forth that keep the pipeline of medical research funding going in the U.S. This article in Science gives a broad overview. Put simply this just turns off the spigot of funding for a huge amount of cancer research as well as research across various other health fields and diseases. The article makes clear that there have been brief pauses before when a new administration takes office. But all signs suggest this is far more thorough-going and draconian. This comes after a similar halt to the weekly MMWR report which CDC sends to hospitals and doctors every week with information on flu, COVID and other infectious diseases.

I think we’re at the point in this where you can’t yet categorically say that this is being done for RFK Jr.-adjacent anti-research nuttery, but basically all signs point in that direction. And there is at least a temporary and disruptive halt to how health research gets funded in this country.

Meanwhile, on a totally different front, Jessica Valenti says that in the last two days Instagram has begun blocking the account of an organization focused on helping women find access to abortion medication.

Democrats are Surrounded by Low Hanging Fruit: Get To It Prime Badge
 Member Newsletter

Yesterday my colleague Kate Riga noted a trap Senate Democrats keep falling into: in an effort to court Republican defectors they temper their criticism of the various Trump nominees. But since there are and will be no defectors they lose on both sides of the equation, gaining no defectors and making their critiques tepid and forgettable. This is unquestionably true. But we can go a step further still. Far from courting potential defectors, they should be attacking them.

Potential defectors are almost always those from marginal states, and some are senators from marginal states who face voters at the next election. 2026 doesn’t have a lot of great prospects. But there are some. So Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, possibly Joni Ernst and new Florida senator Ashley Moody. The criticisms of the bad nominees should be as intense as possible and all focused on the support of these senators. No one does you a favor in these settings for being nice: senators defect when they think they may pay a price at the ballot box. That is the only way to have messaging that takes the initiative and stays on the attack. If things get too hot and the senator pulls their support, great. If not, that just lays the groundwork for beating that senator in the next election. Those two possibilities are the only outcomes of any consequence and the same game plan advances both goals. It’s simple. When they’re upset or hiding you’ll know you’re doing it right. One more point: no one cares about press releases. Getting on camera or activity on social media matter.

Read More 
Day Two Prime Badge
 Member Newsletter

After a morning meeting, I sat down to my computer around 11:30 a.m. ET and read two reader emails picked more or less at random out of my inbox. The first was from an American expat. The gist of his email was that American liberals — Blue America, for lack of a better descriptor — are totally unprepared for what’s coming down the pike toward them. The second was from a federal government employee reviewing the executive orders relevant to the federal workforce and explaining to me in so many words, ‘yeah, good luck with that.’ The expat’s email was generally more pessimistic and totalizing than I’m inclined to be. You may differ and you may be right; who knows? But in general the two emails together captured the moment as well or better than any report, essay or interview I might have read — a mix of actions and red flags almost unimaginable by any normal standard (though in virtually every case unsurprising) mixed with an underbrush of the sheer size, inertia and difficulty of whatever changes Trump is trying to make. They’re both true. Both true at once.

Read More 
Elon Goes Full Sieg Heil In Clarifying Moment

I was at the gym this afternoon when I saw out of the corner of my eye Elon Musk giving an exuberant speech at one of the Trump inauguration’s events. I was listening to something else on my AirPods. Then, only a few moments later, in a moment of exuberant disinhibition he gave what was unmistakably a sieg heil! salute. Then he did it again. He actually appeared to do it three separate times. I took out my AirPods and tried to see if there was going to be any comment on CNN on what we’d just seen. I wondered whether this might somehow have been a weird angle or something. I commented on BlueSky asking, rhetorically, if we’d all just seen what we just saw. It wasn’t a weird angle.

This is one of those cases where it’s helpful to have been to this rodeo one time before.

Read More 
Milley Responds

Gen. Mark A. Milley responds to Biden pardon: “My family and I are deeply grateful for the President’s action today. After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our Nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights.”

TPM Reader JE flagged the statement to me.

A Moment of Calm Prime Badge
 Member Newsletter

I’m not one to tell people how they should react to or experience things. But for me I’m taking all of this in with a serene impassivity. They won. They’re entitled to their day. The Trump people have been signaling for days that they’re going to hit the ground running with what they describe as an executive “shock and awe.” I don’t see any reason to be shocked or awed. I don’t say this in any grand metaphysical sense. I mean that I’ve seen headstrong winners of close elections high on their own supply before. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, all of this is meant to hit you with so much sensory stimulus that you become overwhelmed. But the images you see wrapped around you in an iMax theater aren’t real. It’s still a movie.

Note this “for the ages” picture, above, of Jeff Bezos with the CEOs of Meta, Google and Apple from left to right, at an inaugural service feting Donald Trump this morning at St. John’s church across the street from the White House. You may not have a billion dollars but your dignity is all yours. No one can take it from you. Compared to some you can already be ahead of the game.

One step at a time. They’re not as big as they look.

Read More 
on August 2, 2013 in New York City. What Will CBS Do to Prove to Dems It Can Give Them A Fair Shake?

Fascinating news this afternoon that CBS and its parent company Paramount are considering settling a lawsuit Trump filed against them late last year alleging “election interference” and demanding $10 billion in damages. We know there’s been a lot of this of late. ABC settled an incredibly weak case Trump brought over George Stephanopoulos’ correct use of the word “rape” to describe what a jury in New York concluded Trump had done to E. Jean Carroll. But there’s weak and there’s weak. The suit against CBS isn’t weak. It’s absurd. There’s no tort of editing. But Paramount is considering settling and generally going full Oprah cash & prizes for Donald Trump. This WSJ article, which broke the news, tells us what the issue is: CBS has a merger it’s trying to get approved. And the Trump team, including incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr (who has promised to abuse his power starting on day one), have made it clear that companies have to give Trump cash and prizes if they don’t want trouble.

CBS and Paramount have gotten the message.

Read More 
Greenland Discourse is Starting to Have that Pre-Iraq War Vibe Prime Badge
 Member Newsletter

I’m starting to get a strong Iraq War vibe about Greenland.

By this, I want to be clear, I don’t mean that I expect a catastrophic and ruinous U.S. invasion to take place. I’m referring to something different … but let’s just say: still not great. One of my strongest memories of those dark times 20-plus years ago was a peculiar dynamic that took hold in Washington after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The desire to invade Iraq was already a big thing in elite conservative circles in the late Clinton years. That was the origin of the “Iraq Liberation Act” of 1998. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration quickly made clear it wanted to overthrow the Iraqi regime either as retaliation for the attacks or as some sort of preemptive action to forestall future attacks. The ambiguity was of course an important tell about what and why any of this was happening.

Read More 
Thanks!

I wanted to thank everyone who came out to our live audience taping of the podcast last night in DC. About 200 TPM Readers joined Kate and me in downtown DC where we discussed nomination hearings and more. We hope you had a great time. We definitely did. If you’re a regular podcast listener we’ll be posting last night’s edition, just a little later than usual. We expect to have it in your feeds sometime Friday afternoon.

This was our first time out doing one of these and we’ll be doing more of them. Later this year we’re going to try to do our first live event beyond the east coast. I know this can come off as some kind of east coast elitism. But really it’s logistical. We’re a very small organization. And we have staff in DC and New York. So we can scout out locations, set things up, have people in place to do all the little things that go into an event. Anywhere else is totally different and a different level of planning and resources. But we’re up for it. So we’ll be checking in with readers to see where the demand is — West Coast, Chicago, St. Louis, Texas or any of the gagilion other places in the USA … We have no idea. But somewhere off the eastern seaboard. So keep an eye out for that. And thank you again to everyone who came out. We truly appreciate it and we’re honored by your readership and support.

Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher & Digital Producer:
Senior Developer:
Senior Designer: