Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

Much of what the Trump administration has done during the lawless rampage that has been its first two months has felt haphazard, reckless, at times almost random in nature — all of which, of course, is by design. It’s become well understood in the years since the MAGA movement’s takeover of the Republican Party that the cruelty — and, often, the accompanying chaos — is the point.

But the Trump administration’s escalation of its attacks on academics and educational institutions this week, while scattershot, did hone in on a clear enemy: free thought. Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil remained detained. A Georgetown University researcher here legally was also detained and declared “deportable,” with the administration asserting he had ties to Hamas, a dubious claim that seems to stem from his wife’s Palestinian heritage. Columbia University gave in to Trump’s demands — which involve changing university policy to crack down on student protests and relinquishing control over the school’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies — bowing in the face of the administration’s threat to yank from the school nearly $400 million in federal funds. Law firm Paul, Weiss completed an even further reaching, deeply humiliating capitulation.

Meanwhile, destruction of the nation’s educational systems continued: Trump, of course, made good on his long-time promise to shrink the Department of Education by as much as he legally could, if not more. On Thursday, DOGE descended on the D.C. offices of the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This came after Trump signed an executive order downsizing the independent agency last week — a move that, we’re hearing, may result in drastic cuts to state library systems across the nation. The employee union expects most of the institute’s staff will be placed on administrative leave by next week.

After the new acting director of the institute, Trump’s deputy labor secretary Keith Sonderling, was sworn in from the building’s lobby on Thursday, he sent a chilling message to staff, NBC News reported. In the email, Sonderling highlighted his interest in promoting “patriotism” and watering down the institute’s educational resources, emphasizing his plan to “revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”

Sometimes, chaos is the point. Often, cruelty is the point. This week, casting a threatening pall over the country’s long tradition of scholarship and free thought appeared to be the point.

— Nicole Lafond

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

• Kate Riga reports on a new order out of the Idaho EMTALA case this week: A federal judge ruled Thursday that emergency room abortions in Idaho will remain legal at least until he issues a final decision.
• Khaya Himmelman digs in on just how performative Ed Martin’s new “election integrity” effort appears to be, given the very limited jurisdiction he actually has over such issues as acting D.C. U.S. Attorney.
• Emine Yücel gives us an update on the week ahead in Congress, where House Republicans may or may not attempt to bring the bill saving funding for Washington, D.C. — which passed the Senate — to the floor for a vote. Once again, Mike Johnson must tame the usual hardliners.

Let’s dig in.

Judge Points Out That Pregnant Women Have Become The New Undesirable Patients 

A federal judge ruled Thursday that emergency room abortions in Idaho will remain legal at least until he issues a final decision in a case where Idaho argues that its abortion ban supersedes federal emergency room mandates.

Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) in the first place to crack down on the practice of “patient dumping,” where a hospital would turn away patients who couldn’t pay for their treatment. 

“When EMTALA passed, these ‘undesirable’ patients were the indigent,” Judge B. Lynn Winmill of the District of Idaho wrote. “Today, they are pregnant women. Although Congress could not have foreseen this dimension of patient dumping — women transferred to other facilities not because they are poor but because the emergency service they need has been criminalized — EMTALA’s requirements are deliberately broad.”

The opinion had the odd feature of including Supreme Court justice quotes about this specific case, due to its odd trajectory. A previous iteration of the lawsuit made it to the Supreme Court, which ultimately kicked it back down to the 9th Circuit, deciding it had intervened preemptively. That case formally ended Friday, as the Trump Justice Department declined to continue advancing a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration. 

The new case was brought by an Idaho hospital system, and has now notched an early win. Idaho has argued, eyebrow-raisingly, that abortions are never needed care in emergency situations.

“When Idaho’s abortion ban went into full effect for six months in 2024, St. Luke’s Health System was forced to airlift six pregnant patients with emergency medical conditions to neighboring states where they could receive the appropriate care. In contrast, only a single pregnant patient was airlifted in the entirety of 2023,” Winmill wrote. “This sad but illuminating natural experiment shows that Idaho’s ban on emergency abortions is not compatible with hospitals’ stabilization obligations under EMTALA.”

— Kate Riga

Reminder: Ed Martin Isn’t Allowed To Investigate Things Outside DC

This week, President Trump’s nominee for D.C. U.S. Attorney and 2020 election denier Ed Martin announced the formation of an “election accountability” unit supposedly devoted to upholding voter integrity and investigating voter fraud. But for those with eyes, it’s clearly another attempt to use the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office to address Trump’s various grievances. And the myth of widespread voter fraud is, of course, one of Trump’s favorites.  

The unit has, reportedly, already been investigating a case of voter fraud. And although the details of that supposed investigation are still unknown, it’s important to reiterate that Martin’s jurisdiction is extremely limited. Martin does not have jurisdiction over cases outside of the District of Columbia.

“Beyond the District of Columbia, I’m not sure what Ed Martin thinks his jurisdiction is,” David Levine, Senior Fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, told TPM. “It’s frankly a mystery to me what the predicate is going to be for these efforts.”

We don’t have details on whether or not this investigation is about the 2020 election — which took place almost five years ago and has been proven safe and secure — or about the 2024 election — an election that Trump just won and one that election officials also agree was secure.

While he does not have jurisdiction to look into election operations outside of D.C., TPM reached out to election officials in a few key counties to pick their brains about Martin’s new unit. Election officials from both Maricopa County and Shasta County — hotbeds for election conspiracy theories and misinformation since 2020 — told TPM that they had not heard any details of the supposed investigation. 

“Given that there seems to be no rational basis for initiating an investigation, there seems to be no legal basis for laws that were allegedly broken, there seems to be questionable jurisdiction,” David Becker, the executive director and founder of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research similarly explained to TPM. “One wonders whether this is an attempt to further intimidate public servants and election officials.” 

Becker added that if there is indeed an ongoing investigation, the basis of that investigation remains unclear, other than, in his words “expressing loyalty to the individual who appointed the U.S. Attorney for D.C.” 

— Khaya Himmelman

Where Things Stand: Congress Edition

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Republican leadership is reportedly not planning to bring the bill that would restore $1.1 billion in local funding to the District of Columbia’s budget to the House floor next week.

Though the measure passed by unanimous consent in the Senate last week, in the lower chamber, the politics of staving off the deep cuts is much more complicated.  

Despite support from the Trump administration, not all House Republicans appear poised to help out the District — especially, reportedly, the far-right hardliners.

Johnson now has to figure out when and how to bring the vote to the floor. One option is to bring the bill to the floor through the House Rules Committee. But hardliners on the committee like Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) are reportedly expected to create some sort of roadblock. If the bill can make its way out of the committee, it will pave the way for a floor vote that requires just a simple majority on a procedural motion to bring the measure forward.

Another option: Johnson can use an expedited floor maneuver that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass the bill. But it’s unclear if GOP leadership can get the votes for that.

Meanwhile, Republican leadership will also be entering a three-week stretch where they will have to quickly work through the reconciliation process to push Trump’s fiscal agenda forward on the aggressive timeline that he has outlined. That process will require — as directed by the budget resolution they passed — the House Energy & Commerce Committee to find $880 billion in cuts, among many other things. Republicans insist that those cuts will not involve completely slashing Medicaid or other social safety net programs.

But the Congressional Budget Office put out a report earlier this month, and the numbers say otherwise. CBO says it won’t be possible to reach that goal without cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

House Democrats have been building their messaging around this exact topic for weeks now, trying to rally their base to make a lot of noise about the hugely unpopular cuts.

— Emine Yücel