My favorite congressman, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), has been cheering on the DOGE wilding spree down in DC. And now his constituents are paying the price.

In fairness to Rep. Lawler, he’s one of many Republicans who are cheering on DOGE in DC and fretting about its impact back home and trying to cut special deals with the White House or directly with Elon Musk to soften the blow in their districts. This cut has been on the books for a few weeks and it came up in my reporting on the SSA late last month.

I am and we are still putting together information on this. First, this is a call to see who reading this might have information about the situation today at the Institute of Museum and Library Services in DC. (This is a federal agency heavily involved in libraries around the country.) I’m also trying to find out details about IMLS contracts that were canceled today. If you have any information I hope you’ll contact me confidentially either on Signal at joshtpm.99 or via encrypted email at joshtpm at protonmail dot com.

The following information is tentative: I’m sharing it with you on that basis because I want to find other people who know details. I’m told DOGE showed up at the IMLS offices today and started sending employees home. This was presaged in an executive order from last week which ordered it to shut down to “statutory minimum” levels. A new “acting” director was sworn in in the lobby. From what I understood DOGE operatives immediately starting canceling contracts/grants. In at least one state, these cuts are draconian for the state library system. But I’m trying to understand whether this is happening across all states or whether states that Trump sees as hostile are getting hit especially hard. If you know anything about events today in DC or canceled grants through IMLS please be in touch.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss fallout from Senate Democrats’ decision to vote for the Republican continuing resolution as well as the ongoing menacing of Washington D.C.

Following up on my piece below about events at the U.S. Institute of Peace, you can see Kate Riga’s story based on the court hearing today.

I want to draw out a critical element of what happened on Monday which we learned today. DOGE went to the private security contractor working for USIP and essentially said, you don’t have a clear legal or ethical ability to do this. But if you don’t want to lose all your federal contracts, you have to. And they did.

Each time we hear more about the unfolding situation with the takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace, the story gets darker and involves greater abuses of power. My colleague Kate Riga is, as I write, covering a hearing about the incident that happened yesterday. When I last wrote about the story yesterday, I focused on the fact that the DC Metropolitan Police Department had sided with DOGE and the purported new directors of the Institute and expelled the incumbent staff. That remains the case. But based on new filings which Kate told me about during the podcast we recorded a short time ago, I learned that there is an entirely new dimension of the story which is at least as important as the MPD issue and likely more so. I’ve now had a chance to do a brief review of the court filings from the USIP. I’m going to give you a very brief overview now and then probably either Kate or I or perhaps both of us will have more information later in the day.

So here’s the gist.