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.

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.

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.

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.

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.