Category: Talking Points Memo

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. Who’s Conning Whom Exactly? Before jumping ahead to the constitutionality of President Trump accepting as a “gift” from Qatar a $400 million 747 jumbo jet as short-term replacement for Air Force One and the legality […]

The Post has a good piece up about all the hidden ways the Trump White House is trying to break different parts of the government — through non-payment of grants (different from cancelations), arbitrary limits on purchase authority, etc. They note something very similar to the funds-ghosting I’ve reported on at the National Institutes of […]

Fascinating details emerging with the Qatari royal family giving Donald Trump the personal gift of a fully blinged out 747. Yes, they’re giving him a plane. When I first heard this story a few days ago it at least sounded like Trump had finally lost patience with Boeing because they either couldn’t or would’t or […]

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️ The Supreme Court on Thursday will hear arguments related to President Trump’s executive order that purports to white out the guarantee of birthright citizenship from the Constitution.

The true extent of the confusion between the Trump White House and Republicans in Congress on Trump’s fiscal agenda came crashing out into the open this week.  Amid brutal intraparty tensions over how exactly they will enact sweeping cuts to Medicaid, far-right members of the House Republican conference jammed things up substantially this week when […]

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. The Trump II Cancer Metastasizes At DOJ I hate to break it to you, but the failure of Ed Martin’s nomination to be D.C. U.S. attorney has not produced an outcome that looks appreciably better. […]

As the white smoke cleared, Robert Prevost of Chicago became Pope Leo XIV, the first ever American pope.

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 […]

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the Trump administration’s muteness on abortion (so far), their losses in recent Alien Enemies Act cases and the sweet, sweet downfall of eagle Ed Martin.

A short time ago, President Trump announced in the Oval Office that he is pulling the nomination of Ed Martin as U.S. attorney for D.C. Saying he was “disappointed” that Martin’s nomination foundered in the Senate, Trump floated the possibility of bringing Martin into the administration – and specifically into the Justice Department – in […]

The way attorney Jamie Diez describes it, visiting the El Valle Detention Center was usually straightforward. After making the 50-minute drive from Brownsville, he told TPM, he would usually stroll in unannounced. Officials would, after a wait, bring Diez, an immigration attorney, whichever client he was seeing that day. He was so used to El […]

From an anonymous TPM Reader … As a former OPM appointee, this seems suspect for numerous reasons. Going through the Federal News Network article, the first thing that doesn’t make sense is in the second paragraph. Leading with retirement applications and RIFs is really odd, since the federal retirement process is a government-wide problem that […]

After firing much of its staff, the Office of Personal Management, under Elon Musk’s effective control since late January, has handed out a no bid contract to cloud-AI-based HR company Workday to help handle the mountain of terminations, retirements and layoffs built up over the first three months of the Trump administration. OPM stated in […]

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. It’s Happening Slower Than You Can See The historic constitutional clash over President Trump’s lawless immigration policies continues at a pace that is difficult for casual observers to follow on daily basis, but a burst […]

I am reading a April 21, 2025 letter from Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, Dr Stephen Ferrara, which provides guidance for discontinuing treatment of minors with gender dysphoria at military medical treatment facilities. After noting the Pentagon policy banning the initiation or continuation of treatment with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormone therapy, […]

Over the weekend University of Michigan President Santa Ono announced that he was leaving his post to take up the leadership of the University of Florida. It was an interesting choice. It’s been reported that Ono had been warier of resisting or challenging the dictates of the Trump administration than the majority of the University’s […]

This is largely preaching to the choir. But it’s absent enough from the news coverage that is worth stating clearly. Most right-thinking people are aghast at Trump’s onslaught on higher education. The range of reasons is endlessly discussed and doesn’t need to be enumerated here. But through those discussions is the subtext that higher education […]

Jefferson Griffin (R) surrendered in his six-month-long battle to steal a North Carolina Supreme Court election from Allison Riggs (D) on Wednesday, the same day that North Carolina Republicans’ other ratfuckery — trying to strip power from the state’s elected Democrats to seize control of election administration in the state — became official.

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. For more than two months, the Trump administration has been subject to a federal court order stopping it from cutting funding related to gender identity and […]

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