The Office of Personnel Management has a new hiring plan which instructs government agencies to cease collecting any demographic information on their workforces and rolls out a political loyalty tests which asks new employees to list their favorite presidential executive orders and how they envision bringing the President’s EO vision to fruition.

The trade court’s decision that Trump’s entire trade war was based on powers President Trump didn’t actually have is a big, big deal. But there are some details that are important to consider. As we’ve discussed in earlier posts, this isn’t the only law in which Congress has delegated authority over trade and tariffs to the President, a power which the Constitution gives entirely and unambiguously to Congress. In fact, this law doesn’t deal with tariff authority at all. That’s the whole point of the decision. Yes, Congress has given you a lot of authority over tariffs and trade. But not with this law, the court is saying. Just why he chose this one is important and gives us some visibility into what comes next.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Supreme Court killing off independent agencies, Elon Musk’s sad trombone interviews and the latest news cycle about Biden’s age.

It’s been about a month since I introduced the “DOJ-in-Exile” idea. So I wanted to give you an update on my progress getting it off the ground. First of all, I got quite a lot of interest and excitement from a lot of TPM Readers who were interested in being involved in some fashion. I also got, in response to I think one passing mention about looking for funds, a number of soft commitments in the 5- or 6-figure range. “Commitments” slightly overstates it. I wasn’t trying to discuss anything at that level. I was just interested in hearing about general interest and willingness. Based on those conversations I thought that even from the small group of people I was in touch with, there was likely at least a few hundred thousand of funding available. That’s a pretty good start on the funding front from such a low-key ask.

You have probably seen that a three judge panel of the  U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that Trump’s tariffs are unlawful. So done and done, subject to appeal of course. Trump imposed the tariffs under a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The three judge panel said he greatly exceeded his powers. That means that most of the tariffs which have dominated American and even global politics for the last couple months are out, subject to appeal. I need to dig a bit more into this but I believe some of the tariffs imposed on Canada and Mexico were under separate legal authorities in which the President has clearer power. So I don’t know precisely which is which. But the gist is that most of the tariffs are out and all the “reciprocal” ones.