Over the past four months, I’ve spoken to dozens of biomedical researchers either at NIH, other government grant-making agencies or at the various American research institutions which receive U.S. government grants. Over that time, I’ve developed at least a very rudimentary understanding of the nitty-gritty mechanics of the grant-making relationship between agencies and research institutions. What I’ve learned is a fascinating and critically important dynamic operating just beneath the surface of theWhite House’s whole war on biomedical research specifically and universities generally. The world of biomedical research actually has immense latent political power, albeit largely untapped. Researchers have a much stronger hand politically and the White House’s position, in terms of public opinion, is comparatively weak.

The problem is that the world of biomedical research has close to no experience operating in a political context and especially in the context of mass politics. Much of the world of biomedical research operates through channels of review and funding connecting a few government grant-making institutions to the nationwide archipelago of research institutions and universities. Operating within those channels is so basic to the mores and experience of the research and university world that researchers have in many cases kept trying to operate within them (rebooting them, checking them for unknown clogs) long after the White House has broken them and moved on. The White House has relied on researchers’ unfamiliarity with political fights, using their sole reliance on bureaucratic channels of funding and review — which the universities and the federal government set up together going on a century ago — against them. The only other pathways through which researchers tend to assert themselves are professional organizations, very non-mass politics entities which, in ordinary times, would speak to the relevant members of Congress.

You’ve seen our liveblog, which provides a detailed and technical look at today’s birthright citizenship oral arguments before the Supreme Court. I want to focus on a broad and critical issue. The Trump administration brought this to the Supreme Court. While the underlying or substantive issue is birthright citizenship, they were not seeking to have that issue resolved. They wanted the Court to address whether federal trial courts can issue national injunctions binding the hands of the incumbent administration. 

Just before the onset of the pandemic, I’d started researching a longer project about the personalization of global politics which was accelerated by but not started by Trump. In a way, personalization is the inevitable companion of authoritarianism and autocracy. If there’s one guy who runs the show in each country, then the affairs of that state inherently become indistinguishable from that of the autocrat and his personal checkbook. Relationships between states become those of individual people.

Early in Biden’s presidency, I spoke to one of the very high-end hedge funders who are in the class of people who get invited to the dinners and shindigs with Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. This was around the time that Jared Kushner got that huge $2 billion investment in his new post-White House fund. This source described one of those dinners to me that had occurred not long before that investment. Kushner was seated to MBS’s right or left. I can’t remember which, but same difference. Given how much power MBS wields and his near unilateral control over hundreds of billions of dollars, people would probably literally kill for that level of preferment and proximity. But as it was conveyed to me, everything about that weekend or series of days suggested that Jared was just MBS’s guy. As in, MBS just loved Jared. And remember, Trump was out of power. And in early 2022 or possibly late 2021, it was by no means an obvious bet that he’d be returning to power. The relationship seemed to go far beyond a bet on the Trump family returning to power.

Since late in Donald Trump’s first term as President something called “Schedule F” has figured high in his plans to gut and/or make the federal workforce personally loyal to him as opposed to the constitution. The gist of it is that Schedule F would allow Trump to redefine large numbers of civil servants as the equivalent of “policy-making” political appointees who are fireable at will. After he was forced to leave the White House in 2021, Schedule F played a big role in plans for a second term. For a long time I hadn’t looked that close at the specific legal details of Schedule F as opposed to its potential impact. It was usually presented to me as a kind of ingenious bit of lawyering which allowed Trump to undo the Civil Service system from the inside. And I don’t mean Trumpers calling it ingenious I mean either by supporters of non-partisan federal employment and/or journalists who cover these matters.

Two days ago, I wrote about a pattern operating largely under the radar in the President’s war against higher education. We know about the general grant freezes on about half a dozen elite universities. Then there are countless other grant terminations across a much larger group of universities. One of the complexities of this story is that there are so many different versions of cancellations and terminations going on, it’s hard to figure out which is which. It’s just as hard deciphering to what extent the differences even matter. There are ones tied to prohibited words and concepts (DEI, transgender); there are ones tied to targeted universities; others are terminated on generic efficiency grounds; others are canceled for no clear reason. Are these categories even meaningful or is that all just more smoke and mirrors and distraction?

Here is a brief follow-up on the question TPM Reader MA addresses in an earlier post: why does the Trump administration have it in for biomedical/disease research? It’s a really good question and one I have not seen an adequate explanation for. But having been reporting on this for a few months now I think I do get the outlines of it.

The following is very important news about the Trump White House’s unfolding war against biomedical/disease-cure research in the United States. But the set up is a bit complicated. So I want to note both the complexity and the importance in advance, because I want to really encourage you to read the set up and the details. It’s important stuff and most of it remains unknown to the public, though a few threads of the story have been published.

Back in late March and early April, the Trump administration announced grant freezes against a series of elite private universities, all notionally tied to charges of lax vigilance against antisemitism. The targeted universities eventually included Brown, Columbia, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Cornell and Northwestern. Harvard eventually sued the administration. Princeton has decided to fight the cuts but hasn’t sued. But most of the universities have generally kept quiet about what they’re doing. And in most cases what that means is that they’re negotiating with the administration and trying to keep their faculties quiet to avoid antagonizing anyone during those notional negotiations.

About a week ago, both Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Last at The Bulwark had pieces up arguing different electoral strategies for the Democratic Party. Yglesias argued that while the current Democratic Party is at least competitive in national majority votes (good enough for bragging rights and probably the House) they are at a decisive disadvantage when it comes to winning the Senate in 2026 and in a challenging position when it comes to the Electoral College. What’s necessary, he argues, is a major repositioning on issues like guns and fossil fuels (among other issues) to make Democrats competitive in Senate contests in states like Iowa or Texas, states that often seem like they might elect a Democrat but then don’t. For the purposes of this conversation, we might slot in immigration and trans rights for Yglesias’ fossil fuels and guns. In a way, the arguments were captured by a series of speeches freshman Senator Elisa Slotkin (D-MI) started giving around the same time, in which she argued that Democrats needed to shed their reputation for being “weak and woke” in order to battle and defeat Trump.

At least for the moment this hasn’t gotten much attention. So let me point your attention to a new part of the White House Signal chat story which is actually a pretty big deal. You likely saw that yesterday Reuters published a photo of a Trump Cabinet meeting in which Mike Waltz could be seen using Signal on his phone. That was pretty unbelievable. You could see several of the chats, though mainly who he was chatting with more than the contents. Embarrassing, etc. But 404 Media, a newish tech news site, noticed that there was more than that. He wasn’t actually using Signal at all. He was using a third-party Signal knock-off which allows you to use your Signal account but with additional features.

There’s been an emerging scandal in Florida for a few weeks now that directly affects not only Ron DeSantis but also his wife, Casey DeSantis, who is weighing a run to succeed Ron as governor. The gist of the scandal is the state of Florida settled an over-billing case against a major Medicaid contractor and then laundered a portion of the funds from the settlement through a series of foundations until … well, until somehow over $10 million ended up in the bank account of the Florida GOP and another $1.1 million ended up in Ron’s personal political committee. It’s good to be the king, right?

This story has been percolating for a few weeks. It got new life when a Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Alex Andrade (R), who has been leading a state House investigation into the issue, accused two top DeSantis associates of money laundering and wire fraud. What got my attention this morning is that the Miami Herald talked to four former federal prosecutors, of both political parties, who told the Herald that by normal standards there’s more than enough evidence to start a federal criminal investigation at least into the associates who directly made the relevant transfers if not the DeSantises themselves. (One of the associates who directly arranged things is then-DeSantis chief of staff and current Florida AG James Uthmeier.) The former prosecutors the Herald spoke to say that the question of whether this meets the bar for a federal investigation is not remotely a close call.