Anti-Anti-Nazi Barbarian Hordes are Knocking Down the Gates

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Politics Chat: "We‘re in the middle of a constitutional crisis,”
by Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 1, 2025

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Transcript

Minneapolis. Grand Rapids, dance. Rapids. Danny, how are you?
Seeing what else is going on here. I just got over here.
Quite a day, Quite a couple of days. Quite a couple of weeks, actually. Thank you for being here.
We got Virginia and Minnesota against Sweden. Central Valley and California.
Metro. Atlanta. Portland, Oregon. It's really cold here, by the way. Hingham, mass. With the beautiful church.
Columbus, Ohio I love Columbus. Monterey Bay. Here we go. Wisconsin. Maui.
Oh, man. Me and. All right. So I am here, obviously on Facebook today.
I'm working on the YouTube thing. I just will confess to you, I really care about content.
I'm less good with, technology, so I'm not moving as fast on that front as I could be, but, But I will work on that.
Okay, so let me get right into things, with where we are on this moment,
January 28th, 2025, we are in the middle of a constitutional crisis.
And it's not an immediate as in, you got to do something right this very moment, but it's very, very serious.
And let me let me start by stepping back and explaining, once again, the three branches of government that are established in the Constitution,
that is the underpinning for all the laws in the United States. That is, there are three branches of government.
And the first among equals, if you will, is the Congress.
And the Congress is made up of two different chambers, two different branches, the House of Representatives and the Senate.
And those two branches together are supposed to write our laws. So the House of Representatives turns over completely every two years,
with the hope that it would be very responsive to the American people. And the Senate turns over, every two years.
Only a third of it does. The complete revolution of the Senate is every six years. Although always it has had people stay there forever.
I think I said to you once that until at least recently, I haven't checked the numbers. Recently, the only legislative body that turned over,
more, more slowly than the US Senate was the House of Lords in the UK. So you have those two branches and they are supposed to,
to be the lawmaking body of the United States so they can initiate laws.
But each house has to approve of the laws. And there's one exception to the fact that people can initiate laws,
and that's that the House of Representatives is the only place where revenue bills can start. And you can imagine the framers of the Constitution being concerned
about taxes and the things that they had come out against with, the king. So they made sure that the people would be the ones who were,
the people's representatives would be the ones who would start revenue bills. So the House and the Senate make the laws, and then it doesn't become a law.
Just if the House and Senate says they want a law, it has to go to the president, which is the head of the executive branch,
which is the second of the branches of government. If you look at the way the Constitution was written and in article two,
the framers set out the the duties and the rights of the president, and the president can,
sign the bill into law, in which case it becomes a law or can veto it, can say, no, I don't like this.
At that point, the president almost always just one exception, but has to send it back to the Congress and say, here's why I don't like this law,
which is actually really interesting for people like me. And the the Congress can either go, oh, yeah, oopsie poopsie.
We don't. We made a mistake, which they almost never do, by the way. Or they can say, okay, we can overcome your objections and repass the law
in such a way that she'll sign it. Or they can say, take a hike. We like this law the way it was, and they can pass it over
the president's veto, but that takes a supermajority to do that. Those are the two branches of government that make laws.
And then, as I always joke, there's this third branch of government and that's the judiciary. And by the time the framers
got around to forming the judiciary, I always tease my students and say, well, you know, by then, after they'd given all of these things
that the house is supposed to do and all these things that the Senate is supposed to do as a legislative branch, and then all the things that the executive was supposed to do,
they're like really bored and they're like, we got to go home, we're tired, we're hungry. Let's have a judiciary. And they walk away.
Because in the Constitution, the judiciary is only given the power to adjudicate things between states and between the federal government,
the United States of America and other countries. But what happens is in 1803, with the case of Marbury versus Madison,
the Supreme Court under Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, who was one of our great chief justices,
took upon itself the right of what's called judicial review. And that is they took upon themselves the right to say
whether or not a law was constitutional. They were the ones who got to decide that. And that's, you know, at first the people didn't pay much attention to that.
And sometimes it's been challenged. But really, since 1803, the Supreme Court
has been able to decide whether or not a law is unconstitutional. And if the Supreme Court says now, really not, then they can declared
unconstitutional and the, the, the Congress can get back to work and write a law that is constitutional according to that Supreme Court.
Now, those are the three branches of government as they have been set out in the Constitution of the United States,
and as we have lived with them since that Constitution was signed. So what is going on right now?
Beginning on last Friday, is that the Trump administration is denying that order.
They are, are working with a different concept of the executive branch that began to be developed under the Reagan administration.
And one of the people who really pushed this was Samuel Alito, who at the time was in the Justice Department.
And now, of course, is on the Supreme Court. And what they argue is this they argue
that because the president is the head of the executive branch, that the president in that in that column cannot be checked.
The president is all powerful. And so you can't the other branches of government can't say, well, you can't do that.
And the president can decide for himself whether or not laws are constitutional and whether or
not the things that the Congress does, whether or not he's going to fulfill them. Now, this is deeply problematic, not least because the president takes an oath to,
to, to, make the laws happen.
I can't believe I can't think of the wording right now to defend the laws of the United States and to make sure they're
put into into effect. But it's also a problem because, in fact, the way the Constitution is written,
the Congress has a check on the president, and that's the place you start to see the rise of this concept of what's called the unitary executive
is in the 1980s, when it's very clear that dismantling the federal government as the Reagan Revolution people want it to do, is really unpopular.
So they start to try and find ways that they can do what they want, even if the American people don't like it.
So they begin to stack the judiciary with, with it, ideological,
right wingers, they begin to, to, suppress the vote and they begin to make this argument for the unitary executive.,
Okay. You with me so far? I hope. Nobody is answering, so maybe I hope you're with me.

All right, so what happened on last week on Friday? First of all, was that in mind?
You, it's really interesting to me how vague a lot of what's going on is.
And believe me, I would know because after doing the Trump administration and the Biden administration
and the Trump now the new Trump administration, if you want to know what the Biden administration was doing, there was always a document or statement somewhere so that things were very clear.
It's the Trump administration is not operating the same way. There are things that are just fuzzy and you can't find anybody to clarify them.
So what they did on Friday was they halted funding for foreign aid
and a broad range of foreign aid, and that was really, really astonishing.
First of all, because foreign aid is appropriated by Congress, Congress
writes the laws that appropriate money, that's one of their jobs to do that.
And the the Trump administration said they were pausing aid until they could make sure that all the aid that was distributed
was done in according to what Trump cared about, which is, you know, you want all this, you know, no data and all the stuff he wants.
So this was like a bombshell, because if you know anything about our foreign affairs, you know that since World War II,
beginning under Eisenhower, there was a real concerted effort to focus on diplomacy.
And Eisenhower recognized Eisenhower was a Republican, by the way, is like elected in 1952.
Eisenhower recognized that if you did not make it possible for people
around the world to have a rising standard of living, they would be easy prey for religious extremists or political extremists
like Hitler to come in and turn them into a cult, essentially. And in an era in which there were nuclear weapons,
this would mean the end of the world. So he began really to focus on funding,
countries who were experiencing starvation or who needed some help with their legal systems and so on.
And he won in 1952, the primary in the Republican primary against Senator
Robert Taft of Ohio, who insisted on isolationism and said, I let him let them deal with it themselves,
which to Eisenhower was going to mean that we were going to have extremes in politics.
And everybody focuses on Eisenhower's anti-communism, which is true. And by the way, he made some mistakes.
Everybody does. But he was also the world's first anti-fascist, right. That's what he had fought against in in Europe and that's
what really made him a convert to this idea, was seeing the prison camps. And, you know, from the Holocaust and saying, we have to find a way
to make sure this doesn't happen again. So since 1952 and before that, by the way,
the Democrats had the Marshall Plan, for example. But there has been this idea that the United States would work to
stabilize countries around the world, not because we're touchy feely,
although it does feel good to make sure babies don't starve, but also so that those countries would remain stable
and be good trading partners for the United States. And that's just been what we do.
So when Trump on Friday, he didn't pause that funding, he stopped it.
What that meant was that the places, for example, where George H. Over George W Bush started what's known as pep for the attempt
to stop the spread of Aids in Africa or right now. I don't know if you're following the situation in Sudan.
It is simply heartbreaking. The funding for, for feeding the starving,
Sudanese or, places where they were clearing landmines or, places where they were supporting
food delivery or, places where they were training people to stand against ISIS or,
you know, all the sorts of things that we do that we don't. The people like you and me don't pay a lot of attention to,
just stopped. So all those places are suddenly standing there going, we don't know what we're going to do.
Because, for example, what do you do with the ISIS, the, the, the ISIS prisons, which we're funding to keep the ISIS people in prison?
They're going to let go, get them, let go. And what about the people who are now
had hired people to find landmines, who now can't? And most dramatically, of course, the funding
that we have put into development projects in developing countries as a hedge against, well, first of all, with luck, in a way
that will help those developing countries, especially across the middle of Africa. But by pulling that, what we are doing is saying to up to other countries,
you can't trust us and be, you know, if China wants to do this, why don't you go play with China, which is,
a really dramatic abdication of the role that the United States has played in the world since World War two.
And, of course, the complete dismissal of everything that Biden and Blinken tried to do to create a better global structure that supported,
the needs of everybody in the country, in the world, but also that really made sure the United States had a seat at the table.
We've just walked away from every single table, with the exception of the fact that, the Trump administration
continued to fund munitions for Israel and for Egypt. All right.

So that was Friday. And then, then yesterday,
last night, last night, really late. I'm sorry. You know me, I've lost track of time already
because I'm writing in, in different areas here. Trump did something else but that built on that.
So if you remember on Friday, I think it was on Friday, he fired inspectors, the inspectors general from 17,
different departments, major departments in the, in the, in the country. I wrote about that. It's actually quite interesting how we got inspectors general.
But the reason that that's really important is because he tried that in his first administration. He fired, I think it was five
major inspectors general whom he thought were disloyal to him after his first acquittal from his first impeachment.
And when that happened in 2022, Congress wrote a law aimed at making sure he couldn't do it again.
And they said, if you want to fire an inspector general, which, you know, Obama did it to,
the inspector general that he fired was really erratic and that, you know, but he did do it. And you don't want to fire inspectors general if you can possibly avoid it
because they're from outside and they're basically watchdogs for the departments. But but Congress in 2022 wrote a law that said,
if you want to fire inspectors general, you have to give Congress 30 days notice and you have to explain why you're firing them.
Trump didn't do that. He just blew that off. And some of the Republicans
who voted for that bill said they didn't care, including Tom Cotton of Arkansas, by the way, a senator from Arkansas.

So what Trump apparently heard was go ahead and break the law.
So what we saw Monday, I'm sorry, today's Tuesday. So what we saw Monday was that Trump stopped the funding for everything.
Every federal grant and loan in the United States of America. So think of anything the federal government does with with,
as I say, some exceptions. He says this does not include social Security and Medicare, which makes sense
because he promised up and down he wouldn't do that. And that's much of his base.
But think of everything else. This is this is, federal grants to local law enforcement.
This is, grants to states. This is education. This is Medicaid.
This is supplemental nutrition programs, including women, infants and children: WIC. If you know WIC, it's a great program. This is Head Start. This is, I mean, I could just keep on going.
And here's the kicker. How can you do that? I mean, I can't tell you. Many people have come up to me today and said he can't do that.
It's against the law. Well, it is against the law because this is what's called impoundment.
And impoundment was an attempt under Richard Nixon
in the early 1970s to stop Congress from doing things he didn't like by saying,
I don't care that you appropriated money to create this agency. I'm just not going to disperse that money so you can create whatever you want.
But I'm not going to put up any money to fund that. And you need to remember what I'm telling you this,
that funding is your money. It is your money. It is my money.
This is money that you pay into the federal government. So often we talk about, you know,
federal funding and we don't seem to talk about taxes at the same time. And, you know, taxes are really my thing.
You know, I love the study of taxes because I know and and it makes me sound like the most boring person in the world, which might be true,
but when you talk about taxes, you were talking about what a society thinks is important enough to put money into.
So when Nixon said, I'm not going to fund these things, he was saying, listen, I don't care what Congress said it wants to spend your tax dollars on.
I, Richard Nixon, don't think that's a good way to do it. And Congress said, oh boy, is this not going to fly.
So in 1974, they passed something called the Impoundment Control Act that said, and I paraphrase, screw you, you're not doing that.
That's a paraphrase. What they said was a president may not impound
moneys that the Congress has appropriated for whatever purpose. You just got to do it.
You have to make sure the laws are are carried out. That's what the president agrees to do.

So the right wing movement in the United States of America, led in this moment by
the Heritage Foundation, which has very close ties to Viktor Orban in Hungary, says they consider that law unconstitutional.
They consider that law unconstitutional. I bet you have some favorite laws you consider unconstitutional, too, right?
My point being that Trump has just signed on to the idea that is laid out in project 2025,
that the impoundment Act is unconstitutional. It's a law, and courts have upheld this law repeatedly
since 1974, saying Congress is the lawmaking body. If it says we're going to put $100,000 toward
developing a new kind of Brussels sprout, which I'm making up -- they may or may not have done that -- that's what the people's representatives decided to do. Trump is saying, no,
I don't care that Congress thinks we should fund cancer research.
I don't care that Congress thinks we should fund supplemental nutrition
programs. I don't care that Congress thinks we should fund law enforcement. I don't care that Congress thinks we should fund education. He is saying the person who gets to decide
what we do is him. I want to make sure that sinks in deeply enough.
He is saying that the person who gets to decide what this government is going to fund
is him.

So, let me now step back from that a little bit and give you a, not not necessarily a bigger picture, because that's a really big picture,
but a picture of where we are in this two week period. Because I think what we have seen
is somebody is asking what's going to happen, and what do we do next? I'm going to come to that, I promise. But I do think
the set-up here is important. Because this is a constitutional crisis and it looks very much like an earlier period in our history,
before we had a Constitution, that I'll talk about. But this other piece that I want to tell you about matters too,
and that said, if you remember when he was running for office, and you must keep in mind that this president is mentally
slipping badly, that really matters. He is not playing with a full deck.
You know, I can't think of any other way to put it. You have to understand that he is not the evil genius here.
He's a man who loves money, appears to like to have women around him, and who wants to stay out of jail,
and wants to be loved, which you know, he likes adulation. I don't think he knows what love is. That was an editorial I shouldn't have given you. He wants adulation, but he doesn't have the capacity to put these pieces together.
He really doesn't. Which does raise the question of who is putting them together. But if you think about project 2025, which we talked about a lot last summer
before the election, and Trump and his people distanced themselves from, they said, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We got nothing to do with project 2025. Well, of course they did. And now two thirds of the executive orders and the things he's done, that
he's put in place, are straight from project 2025, including his office, are the person he wants to install
at the head of Office of Management and Budget. Russ Vought, who was instrumental in writing
in the Heritage Foundation and Instrumental in writing Project 2025. And what project 2025 called for, was for the President
to get rid of the nonpartisan civil service, which we've had since 1883, and make it loyal to him.
He's called for getting rid of the independence of the Department of Justice and making it loyal to the President, and he called for getting rid
of the independence of the military and making it loyal to the President. And once you had that in place, you wanted a very strong executive
who would impose Christian nationalism on the United States of America.
In the last less than eight days, what we've seen is exactly that.
We have seen the purging of the nonpartisan civil service to make it loyal to Trump.
We have seen the purging of the Department of Justice to make it loyal to Trump. There was a big purge of people yesterday.
Joyce White Vance wrote about it last night. And we've seen the attempt to put,
to have control of the military by putting over it Pete Hegseth, who is a radical, right wing Christian extremist,
who studied at Princeton under Patrick Deneen, who is one of the right wing extremist Catholics like JD Vance and like Peter Teal,
who want to destroy the federal government in order to put in place, right? Right wing Christian nationalism.

So we've got those three things in place. And now we have the attempt to destroy the secular government that we have had in place,
that we have built, that you and I have built by electing our representatives, and to destroy it.
We don't know what they plan to put in place, but this is destruction
of our constitutional system. And a number of Republicans are vocally going along with it saying, that, you know, they think private philanthropy, for example,
is a better way to fund cancer which is just crap. I mean, I could start citing studies, but it just doesn't work.

The reason we built the government that we did is because this is
how you deliver to the American people who have joined together. We the people have joined together to form a union, to create a government
that does the best it can for the most of us. That's what the United States government is.
And what they are coming in is saying, no, no, no, no, no, we're going to get rid of that because our guy Donald Trump,
although, as I say, I don't think he is the one pulling the strings here, he's the one who should make
the final decisions. So right there,
we have ourselves a constitutional crisis.

And and let me walk a little bit further.
And now I'm, I'm telling you not what has happened, but what
certainly seems like it's going to happen, because they have said it's going to happen. So what is he doing?

And I think there are a number of things he's doing. I think one is they are provoking a Constitutional crisis.
And I will tell you more about that in a second. I think they are also, I think somewhere they have figured that
if they stop all this funding, that that will put enough money back in the Treasury,
that they can have their tax cuts for the very wealthy and corporations, which Trump's new Treasury secretary, Scott
Bezzant, has agreed is a top priority for the Trump administration. But it's been a big problem for the radical right wing extremists
because they're like, we don't like how much spending is going on here. Well, they're the same ones who want to get rid of the secular government.
So if you get rid of the secular government and you say, we're clawing back all that money, we're going to throw it in the Treasury, now we can give all the money to the rich people and corporations.
It kind of is an equation that cancels a lot of stuff out.

Is that how you want your tax dollars to be spent? To have it go into the pockets of the very wealthy and corporations? Remember, from 1981 to 2021, about $50
trillion went from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. So I think they are partly doing that as well.

Now, what they're going to fill those holes with is anybody's guess. So that's what they are doing so far.

Now let me go back to and like I say, I keep talking about power sloshing around in Washington. Trump is already talking about a third term.
You know, that's like me -- I suppose he could live forever but come on, he's 78 years old.
He's a wreck now. I'm not expecting that's going to happen. I think what they're doing more clearly is putting all this in place
for somebody else to take over and then say, hey, we didn't do this. This is all Trump's fault, and throw the bag on him.

So when you think about power sloshing around, who is that? Who are the people calling the shots?
I don't know. I've been thinking about this all day. And I think you can see certain fingerprints, but others are not as clear. Whom does it benefit to destroy America's standing around the globe?
There's a lot of people that benefit. But there's a lot of people who are benefiting from cutting the government
domestically that are hurt by that. So I don't know the answer to that, and I urge you to think about it.

But now I want to go back to what we do,
because I told you, this looks like something else to me.
And you know what it looks like to me? It looks like the attempt of the monarch,
George the Third, who, by the way, was also mentally incapacitated,
on occasion, to force the colonial English settlers
to pay taxes without having a say in their government. And if you remember that, and I'll write about that this week,
because I think it's important. If you remember, the British Crown has to pay for all
the wars that have taken place both in Europe and in the colonies.
And Americans have not been heavily taxed at all. So after 1763, they chunk a whole bunch of taxes
on Americans, in a number of different places. One of the places you can see it,
there's a couple of rafts of them, but one of the places you can see it is in Pride and Prejudice, you know, the novel by Jane Austen, when Mr. Collins is pointing out how many windows
the Lady Catherine de Berg's mansion has. And a modern American reader is like, who cares how many windows?
That's because one of the things that was taxed was glass. So by saying, look at all these windows, and counting
the windows, he's saying, look, she's so rich, she can pay all those taxes. There you go. That's your literary moment of the day.

But they chunk on a whole bunch of taxes. And the Americans are like, especially the American merchants are like, what's going on here?
Like, we're not paying this crap, you know. We're not represented, and we're not going to do this. But most Americans are, you know, they get rid of most taxes
gradually because it's not worth it. It's costing more money to collect the taxes than they're making. So they get rid of most of the taxes, but they keep the tax on tea for the East India Company. And the East India Company has a subsidy.
So they're going to be able to sell tea more cheaply to the colonies. And if they
flood the colonies with this cheap tea, and the colonists are willing to buy it, the Crown
and the Parliament will have established the principle of being able to tax the people without representation.

So what do the people who recognize the issues here do?
They write and say, stop it. It's one thing to do. But they also talk about it everywhere.
They have fliers about it. They literally paint tea pots that talk about it.
They urge people to move away from tea, and they explain what's going on. And the reason that I'm thinking about that today is
because this is bad. And I mean, this is bad in a Constitutional sense.
It's of course, also bad for anybody who depends in any way on federal money.
And and I say that as somebody who does not. I am one of the extraordinarily few
lucky people in the country right now who doesn't yet need Medicare or Medicaid,
and who doesn't need grants or all those things. But I'm rare in that, and it will not last forever.
So I'm not like, oh, they took my benefits. I'm telling you that as somebody who cares about the functioning of society,
we all care about this. And people need to understand what exactly this means.
This means a lot of people are scared right now because they do not know where their paycheck is going to come from.
It means people are scared because they do not know how they're going to maintain their elderly relatives in a nursing home, which is usually paid for by Medicaid.
There's there's a lot of damage and a lot of places people are going to be hurt here. They need to understand what the Constitutional problem is here.
And the fact that Trump is trying, and his people are trying to set him up to become a dictator.

So when you think about what we are going to do next in this,
the obvious thing to do is to complain to Congress because they're the ones who are giving up their power.
And I'm not going to say not to do that. You should be doing that every second. And I would urge you to
certainly cheer on the Democrats. The Democrats are not the problem here. Everybody complains to the Democrats.
I've said this to you before. When you get really upset, people complain to me, "I can't do anything. I'm already on your side.
Complain to the Republicans." Make their lives swamped with constituents and people saying you took a specifics.
You took away Medicaid, you took away WIC, you took away funding for Sudan, you took away all these things.
And we are not going to support you going forward. And that needs to be not just people who voted for Kamala Harris.
That needs to be everybody.

I can think of two people right now who voted for Trump. And when I said their Medicaid was at risk
based on project 2025, they said he will never touch Medicaid. If you don't think I'm going to be telling them that Medicaid has now been frozen,
you're dead wrong. They need to know what is happening, because we need to make this
a moment where we defend the US Constitution. Do it by pressuring your Congress people,
of course, but also do it by doing the same thing that the Colonials did.
Make sure you cannot not know this is happening. The people must know that this is happening.
Because it is. Somebody just said, we need to stop this madness. It is madness. And when you write to Congress, when you write to the Republican senators,
remember, I keep saying this, only about 14 of the Republican senators are MAGA. The other 40 or so are not. They're scared, and they need constantly to hear that they are destroying their power.
They are destroying the power of the Senate and they are destroying America, the American constitutional government.
And they must hear it in a huge way starting now, or it will be too late.

They are out there very much testing the waters to see if they can get away with this. As I say, power is sloshing and now is the time
for Americans to say, these are my tax dollars. I mean, you can disagree. You can say, I don't care.
I'd just as soon let Donald Trump decide these things. I think the vast majority of us like the idea
of having a Congress, a government, having the Constitution,
rather than having a dictator decide what's going to happen.

I will point out, of course, that,
we are less than two years away from 1776, which I think is really interesting.
I think it's time for us to challenge what it means to be part of the United States government, and what it means to be part of this country,
and what it means for the people to have a say in their government.

And as you know, the right wing flooded the media.
And today, CNN's Jim Acosta left. He said he needs to stand against dictatorship.
He needs to stand against a tyrant. And now is the time we're going to have to be doing that. \

So, what else did I say I was going to tell you today? That was pretty much it.
I would urge you, in this to take care of people who are frightened right now.
But don't let up. I mean, one of the things you simply cannot do is say, I can't deal with this.
I can't look at this because, again, the number of people who want this country
to become a Christian dictatorship, it's about 6% of a country of 332 people, 332 million people.
Even if it were 332, it would be okay. 332 million people,
if we speak up, they cannot do it. And I think that this is what they're trying to
do is hit so quickly that we don't see what's going on. And I would urge you really to focus at the state level everywhere for sure.
But call on your representatives, call on your Congress people, call on your state people and say, are you really okay with this?
Because this is not the American democracy that I know. We cannot be silent.
In the midst of this, call it out.

Somebody just said one of their congresspeople said that it was a waste to put money
into prosthetics for old people because it was a waste of money. Do you believe that? I don't believe that.
Speak up for the things that you care about and that you believe in and and call this one out.

Now, I'm I'm sitting here, we have a lot of trolls here. Don't argue with the trolls. Shut them down.
Block them. We're not going to have this conversation with them. They are wasting our time. And, I'm trying to shop at the stores that are supporting American democracy.
Support the people who are supporting American democracy. It does not have to be Partisan at this point.
It's absolutely not Partisan. Are you with a dictator who is trying to destroy our Constitution,
or are you with the American Constitution and our democracy? We can sort the rest out later.

I'm seeing if there's anything else. I know people keep saying,
they're frightened and they feel alone. You're not alone. There's 17,000 people here on this call right now.
Find your people. You can find your people. I always send people to red wine and blue. But you can go to any other organization, or you can just start some of your own.
You must not be alone in this. But again, you must speak up. And again, they want you to be frightened.
They want you to be so scared you won't speak up. And once they get you to that place, then nobody will dare to speak up.

But we are not there yet. I talked about this before the other night. Power is sloshing around. In a dictatorship like North Korea power is not sloshing around. You know exactly who holds that power right now.

You can still speak up. You can still support independent media. Absolutely. You know, if you have the money to support independent people, don't give it to me.
Give it to somebody else who can get out there and and keep holding truth to power.
You can support the people who speak up, and you can come down on the media that doesn't speak up. I mean, at this point, who do we have left but ourselves? And you know what? When the American people have had to do this in the past, every freaking time they have stepped up,
and they have recreated the idea of American democracy. They did it in the 1850s.
They did it in the 1890s. They did it in the 1930s. They did it in World War II.
They began to do it in the 1960s. We can do it again today, because at the end of the day,
all democracy is, is it's the idea that people have a right to work
hard and create their own destiny, their own end. And what we are seeing here in this moment
is MAGA Republicans saying, no, no, we don't actually think that you have the right
to have a say in your government, or to be treated equally before the law. We believe that we, a few dictators and one dictator over
all, get to determine your future. That has never flown in in society.
It's certainly never flown in American society. And this is our moment to say,
it's not going to fly now, or at least to go down fighting. And I don't believe it's going to come to that.
I really think that this is in our DNA and that we can do it. We just have to make sure that people understand the stakes.

Look around you. How many of even the MAGA voters around you would say, hey, I'd rather have a dictator?
They didn't think that. They wanted to make sure that people like them
had a shot at a future, and at least the ones who weren't openly Proud Boys and so on.
But given the choice between a dictatorship
and a democracy, I think most of them would choose a democracy. You saw it during the Civil War as well, when people who were virulently racist, anti-black

racist, came on board to defend democracy. We've done it in the past, we can do it again.
I'm trying to look here. Somebody just said my next book maybe should look at the times that the American public has done this.
In my last book, the whole third section of Democracy Awakening was the different ways in which people had managed to expand
democracy, even in really bad times. So I'm actually working on a new book that's going to be fun, actually. People are asking if you live in a blue state, what can you do?
Contact any of the organizations that are working to defend rights, including, as I say, red, white and blue, because you can get involved
across the states in different races. You can put pressure on in different ways.
If you're in North Carolina, get involved this minute trying to defend the election of Allison Riggs to the state Supreme Court.
She won. The Republican is trying to throw her out by throwing out at least 4000 votes, or as many as 60,000 legally cast votes.
Get involved there. Get involved in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has an election on April 1st for a state
Supreme Court seat that needs to be held by a non MAGA person, by a Democrat in this case,
because that Supreme Court will determine whether or not Wisconsin will be gerrymandered within an inch of its life.
So it only returns Republicans to office. Reach out to any of these organizations. Lots of people write to me saying they want to start stuff.
I would urge you to make sure that there isn't already something out there doing what you're doing,
because what people really need is support, and by that I mean your time or your money, both of which are extraordinarily valuable.
And if you don't have money to put into things, remember that your time is equally valuable.
That's one of the things I always say to people, you know, there's two kinds of currency. One is time and one is money.
And often the people who have a lot of one don't have much of the other. So whichever you've got, throw your Oar in, and
help independent media. I've talked about this before. Independent media is rising.
If you don't want to start your own web page about what's happening in your town, find somebody else who is and say, you know what,
maybe we can go together and I'll cover the school board meetings. You cover the basketball game. Somebody else will cover, you know, the Department of Public Works, and we'll be able to inform people of what is happening in our towns.
This is a moment for us to reclaim reality so that we can't have a President who says he has had the army turn on the spigot of water in California.
Do not even start me. That's is crap. Somebody also wrote to me the other day and asked if it was true that Trump was
calling out the Army Corps of Engineers to work in North Carolina. The answer to that is no.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been there since the the floods happened. They've cleared, you know, hundreds of millions of tons of debris.
They've rebuilt all kinds of stuff. Trump is now saying he did that. That is a lie. All that stuff out there, all kinds of places we can be heard
right now, we need to feel it and not say, oh, I'm scared, somebody else needs to do this.
Think about it. 17,000 people here. Think of the difference we could make in just the next week.
If we all do things, it's okay to take a break, but make sure your voice gets heard.
All right? I think I'm going to leave it there.

And somebody just said, what do you do in Florida again? You got plenty of pressure to put on places in Florida at the state level.
Your state legislature is corrupt as hell. And same with Ohio, and same with Mississippi.
You know, you can do a lot of good there just by by dealing with your local legislature, Slater's and saying, you know, what are you doing here?
Ohio's, energy issue and all that. Or Florida is finally starting
to push back against Ron DeSantis, chair those people on demand that you get felons, you know, that they actually honor
the law that you all passed to get felons able to vote again. You know, they're there. You just need to find your issue.
All right?

Somebody just asked how to watch me.
If you have quit Facebook, I am working on getting YouTube and streaming to Facebook and I'll keep trying to expand what I do.
I got the impression you liked the short thing I did on Sunday. I will see if I can incorporate those more often.

Things are coming at us awfully quickly. I will urge you once again, try and get enough sleep.
You'll notice I'm posting letters earlier, which means I'm not catching the 11:00 breaking news.
But it does mean I'm getting sleep. Try and eat, right? Try and exercise. And try and laugh some.
Because, as I say, a joyful population cannot be controlled. All right.

Thank you for being here. And I will see you. I'm actually doing a big radio show at 5:00 my time
somewhere. Don't remember where. Don't know what the topic is. But I will see you tonight, in a letter.
And I will see you again later on this week. Thanks for being here.

[admin]

Musk aides lock workers out of OPM computer systems: [Quit and Take vacation to "dream destination"; Sofa beds moved into Agency so team can work around the clock]
by Tim Reid
Reuters
February 2, 2025 3:32 PM MST Updated 19 hours ago
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-a ... 025-01-31/


Protest outside the Office of Personnel Management headquarters, Washington, D.C., February 2, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

• Musk aides restrict access to federal employee data systems
• Musk's team works around the clock, installs sofa beds at OPM
• Concerns include cybersecurity and lack of oversight

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.

Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

Musk, the billionaire Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.

The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department's data systems.

The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.

"We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems," one of the officials said. "That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications."

Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.

Musk, OPM, representatives of the new team, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

OPM has sent out memos that eschew the normal dry wording of government missives as it encourages civil servants to consider buyout offers to quit and take a vacation to a "dream destination."

Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, said the actions inside OPM raised concerns about congressional oversight at the agency and how Trump and Musk view the federal bureaucracy.

"This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk's inner circle at OPM to know what's going on," Moynihan said.

MUSK INFLUENCE

A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency's headquarters, which contains the director's office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said.

The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.

Musk, a major donor to a famously demanding boss, installed beds at X for employees to enable them to work longer when in 2022 he took over the social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.

Twitter employee, whose pic of sleeping in office went viral, laid off
by Ritu Maria Johny
Edited by Chandrashekar Srinivasan
Hindustan Times
Feb 27, 2023 12:20 PM IST
https://www.hindustantimes.com/business ... 03754.html



The latest layoff is said to be the eighth round of job cuts since Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022.. Twitter laid off at least 200 employees over the weekend as per a report by The New York Times (article beyond paywall), and it has now emerged that a product manager, whose picture of sleeping on the floor at the company headquarters went viral earlier, was among the fired staff.

Esther Crawford went viral in 2022 for a picture of her sleeping on the floor at the company's office to meet deadlines. (Twitter)

"It feels like a hostile takeover," the employee said.

The new appointees in charge of OPM have moved the agency's chief management officer, Katie Malague, out of her office and to a new office on a different floor, the officials said.

Malague did not respond to a request for comment.

The moves by Musk's aides at OPM, and upheaval inside the Treasury building caused by other Musk aides that was reported on Friday, underscore the sweeping influence Musk is having across government.

David Lebryk, the top-ranking career U.S. Treasury Department official, is set to leave his post following a clash with allies of Musk after they asked for access to payment systems, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

The new team at OPM includes software engineers and Brian Bjelde, who joined Musk's SpaceX venture in 2003 as an avionics engineer before rising to become the company's vice president of human resources. Bjelde's role at OPM is that of a senior adviser.

The acting head of OPM, Charles Ezell, has been sending memos to the entire government workforce since Trump took office, including Tuesday's offering federal employees the chance to quit with eight months pay.

"No-one here knew that the memos were coming out. We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world," one of the officials said.

Among the group that now runs OPM is Amanda Scales, a former Musk employee, who is now OPM's chief of staff. In some memos sent out on Jan. 20 and Jan. 21 by Ezell, including one directing agencies to identify federal workers on probationary periods, agency heads were asked to email Scales at her OPM email address.

Another senior adviser is Riccardo Biasini, a former engineer at Tesla and most recently a director at The Boring Company, Musk's tunnel-building operation in Las Vegas.

Reporting by Tim Reid; Editing by Ross Colvin and Howard Goller

[admin]

“Enormous Disruption”: Trump’s Tariffs on Mexico & Canada Set to Worsen Inflation
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 03, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/t ... transcript



We speak with longtime trade policy expert Lori Wallach about President Donald Trump’s move to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from Mexico, Canada and China — the three largest trading partners of the United States. It has sent global stocks tumbling and raised fears of more inflation. Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on most imports from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% on goods from China, set to take effect Tuesday (After our broadcast, Mexico announced Trump had paused the new tariffs on Mexico for a month). Energy resources from Canada will carry a lower 10% tariff. Canada and Mexico have vowed to enforce retaliatory tariffs on the U.S., upending decades of economic integration under free trade agreements. Trump has also threatened to impose tariffs on the European Union. [Lori] Wallach says that while tariffs can be an effective tool as part of a larger economic package, Trump’s approach is likely to do more harm than good, even on his own stated goals of curbing immigration and drugs. “We certainly don’t want to hold on to the old, devastating neoliberal trade agenda, but the random tariffs on Mexico and Canada … aren’t going to get you the outcome you want,” says Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project and board member of the Citizens Trade Campaign.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with President Donald Trump’s move to impose sweeping tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China — the three largest trading partners of the United States. Global stocks are tumbling after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on most imports from the U.S.’s allies Canada and Mexico and 10% on goods from China. Energy resources from Canada will have a lower 10% tariff.

In a statement, the White House claimed the tariffs are needed to hold the three countries “accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country,” unquote.

Trump is also threatening new tariffs on the European Union.

On Sunday, Trump addressed reporters outside Joint Base Andrews.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Mexico, we’ve had very good talks with them. And this is retaliatory. This is retaliatory to a certain extent. Millions of people flowed into our country through Mexico and Canada, and we’re not going to allow that.

AMY GOODMAN: Economists on the left and right have widely criticized Trump’s move, which is expected to raise consumer prices — the extremely conservative editorial page of The Wall Street Journal's headline, “The Dumbest Trade War in History.” The National Association of Manufacturers said they'll ultimately, quote, “bear the brunt of these tariffs, undermining our ability to sell our products at a competitive price and putting American jobs at risk,” unquote.

Wall Street Journal editorial calls Trump tariffs ‘dumbest trade war in history’: Some US business leaders reacted neutrally, while JP Morgan CEO says tariff threats can be used effectively
by Edward Helmore
The Guardian
Sun 2 Feb 2025 15.23 EST

US business leaders are offering a mixed reaction to the steep trade tariffs that Donald Trump’s administration has imposed on Canada, Mexico and China, as the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called it “the dumbest trade war in history”.

Donald Trump hit Canada and Mexico with a 25% tariff on imports, and China with 10%, on Saturday in a move that launched a new era of trade wars between the US and three of its largest trading partners. The tariffs against Canada also include tax oil and energy products at 10%.

Trump said on his own Truth Social social media platform that he had used emergency powers to issue the tariffs, due to come into effect on Tuesday, “because of the major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs killing our Citizens, including fentanyl”.

The Journal said the moves “reminds us of the old Bernard Lewis joke that it’s risky to be America’s enemy but it can be fatal to be its friend”, adding that with the exception of China “Mr Trump’s justification for this economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense.”

It added: “Drugs may be an excuse since Mr Trump has made clear he likes tariffs for their own sake, pointing to Trump’s comments on Thursday that the US doesn’t need oil or lumber from its neighbors.

“Mr Trump sometimes sounds as if the US shouldn’t import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home,” the editorial continued. “This is called autarky, and it isn’t the world we live in, or one that we should want to live in, as Mr Trump may soon find out.”

Trump reacted strongly to the outlet’s editorial position, posting on Truth Social that “a ‘Tariff Lobby’, headed by the Globalist, and always wrong, Wall Street Journal, is working hard to justify Countries like Canada, Mexico, China, and too many others to name, continue the decades long RIPOFF OF AMERICA, both with regard to TRADE, CRIME, AND POISONOUS DRUGS that are allowed to so freely flow into AMERICA.

“THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!”, Trump continues in the screed. “The USA has major deficits with Canada, Mexico, and China (and almost all countries!), owes 36 Trillion Dollars, and we’re not going to be the “Stupid Country” any longer.”

Larry Summers, treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, called the impending tariffs “a self-inflicted supply shock.

“It means less supply because we’re taxing foreign suppliers. And that will mean higher prices and lower quantities,” [Larry] Summers told CNN. “This is a self-inflicted wound to the American economy. I’d expect inflation over the next three or four months to be higher as a consequence, because the price level has to go up when you put a levy on goods that people are buying.”

Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, told ABC’s This Week that Trump’s tariff move “is disrupting to an incredibly successful trading relationship.

“We’re really disappointed and we’re hopeful that they don’t come into effect on Tuesday,” Hillman added. “We’re ready to continue to talk to the Trump administration about that.”

Hillman said Canada was eager to build on its trading relationship with the US but acknowledged “it’s hard to maintain that sense of common purpose and moving forward if we get into this kind of a dynamic on tariffs”.

The Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, ordered retaliatory tariffs in response to the US decision to slap tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico, saying her government sought dialogue rather than confrontation with its trade partner to the north.

Sheinbaum pointed to her government’s action against fentanyl production in Mexico since she took office in October, saying it had seized 20m doses of the synthetic opioid and detained 10,000 individuals tied to drug trafficking.

Mexico has ordered retaliatory tariffs and Canada’s prime minister said the country would put matching 25% tariffs on up to $155bn in US imports. China’s Ministry of Commerce said it would file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization for the “wrongful practices of the US”.

But some US business leaders have reacted neutrally to Trump’s tariffs that the Budget Lab at Yale University estimates would cost the average American household $1,000 to $1,200 in annual purchasing power.

Gregory Daco, chief economist at the tax and consulting firm EY, calculates the tariffs would increase inflation, currently running at 2.9%, by 0.4% and cut US GDP by 1.5% this year.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that tariff threats can be used effectively to “bring people to the table” to negotiate more favorable trade terms.

Tariffs are “an economic tool” or “an economic weapon”, depending on how they’re used, [Jamie] Dimon remarked to CNBC. “I would put in perspective: if it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. I mean, get over it.”

William Reinsch, a former US trade official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said many companies had stocked up on imported goods ahead of time to avoid the tariffs and would be able to draw on existing inventories.

That may be an effective strategy for non-perishable goods, like construction materials, but less so for perishable goods that are not afforded the ability to stockpile. “You don’t stockpile avocados,’’ Reinsch said. “You don’t stockpile cut flowers. You don’t stockpile bananas.’’

The US Chamber of Commerce business group [NAM, National Association of Manufacturers] warned that the tariff policy was wrong-headed and would cause economic harm to Americans.

The group’s senior vice-president John Murphy said: “The President is right to focus on major problems like our broken border and the scourge of fentanyl, but the imposition of tariffs under IEEPA is unprecedented, won’t solve these problems, and will only raise prices for American families and upend supply chains.”

He added: “The Chamber will consult with our members, including main street businesses across the country impacted by this move, to determine next steps to prevent economic harm to Americans.”

Democratic politicians were not impressed. “Donald Trump got hired … saying he was going to lower grocery prices. Two weeks in, he’s doing something that’s going to do the opposite,” senator Mark Warner told CBS’s Face the Nation.

The Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar summed up her thoughts on the early days on the second Trump administration on MSNBC: “Chaos up, corruption up, and, sadly, prices of eggs up … This is not what American economy needs right now … He is not using a chisel, he is using a sledgehammer.”

This story was amended on 2 February 2025 to clarify that Canada’s oil and energy products would be under a 10% tariff.

But Trump defends the tariffs, saying he’s fulfilling his campaign promise. He was questioned by reporters last week.

REPORTER: You promised Americans to try to reduce costs. And so many of the products —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

REPORTER: — that would be tariffed, when they come into the country, the outgoing country is not paying the tariff. The buyers in the United States —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

REPORTER: — pay that, and then that’s passed on to consumers —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

REPORTER: — in most instances.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sometimes.

REPORTER: How would you expect to have prices come down if you have such a broad plan for tariffs? And what do you say to the voters who want to see you reduce everyday costs?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, let me just tell you that I got elected for a lot of reasons. Number one was the border. Number two was inflation, because I had almost no inflation, and yet I charged hundreds of millions of dollars of tariffs to countries. And think of it: I had almost no inflation and took in $600 million of money from other countries. And tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause success, and cause big success. And we’re going to have great success. There could be some temporary, short-term disruption, and people will understand that.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Mexico and Canada responded to Trump’s tariffs by issuing retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. This is Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

PRESIDENT CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM: [translated] Mexico does not want confrontation. We start from the collaboration between neighboring countries. Mexico not only does not want fentanyl to reach the United States, but we do not want it to reach anywhere. Therefore, if the United States wants to fight criminal groups and wants us to do it jointly, we must work in an integral way.

AMY GOODMAN: And this was the response Saturday from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Trump’s new tariffs.

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I want to speak directly to Americans, our closest friends and neighbors. This is a choice that, yes, will harm Canadians. But beyond that, it will have real consequences for you, the American people. As I have consistently said, tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities. They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump. It will impede your access to an affordable supply of vital goods crucial for U.S. security, such as nickel, potash, uranium, steel and aluminum. They will violate the free trade agreement that the president and I, along with our Mexican partner, negotiated and signed a few years ago.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at American Economic Liberties Project, board member of Citizens Trade Campaign, the U.S. national trade justice coalition of unions and environmental, consumer, faith, family, farm and other groups.

Lori, welcome back to Democracy Now! Respond to what’s supposedly going to be enacted tomorrow. Now, let’s be clear. That’s Tuesday. Trudeau said he’s tried to reach out to the president; he won’t return his calls. The president says he’s going to speak to both presidents, Mexico and Canadian prime minister and presidents today. What’s going on here?

LORI WALLACH: So, tariffs can be a very effective tool to achieve lots of goals. If you’re for enforceable labor standards in trade agreements to raise wages, you’re for tariffs. If you are for border carbon adjustment to promote low-carbon production, you’re for tariffs. Tariffs are part of the formula of the tools you use to try and reestablish our ability to make things here that we need and create good jobs for the two-thirds of Americans who don’t have a college degree, so making solar panels, medicine, EVs.

But slapping on tariffs on Mexico and Canada, ostensibly about migration and drug trafficking, is not just ineffective — I mean, it’s like trying to do surgery with a saxophone instead of a scalpel — but also is going to be damaging. It’s going to cause enormous disruption, but without any of the outcomes and goals that one might actually want to use a tariff to achieve to help working people or build our resilience.

AMY GOODMAN: What is Trump trying to accomplish here? Some have said — I mean, on the one hand, he’s been threatening China with tariffs, but he’s doing, he said, 10% on China, and with his allies, Mexico and Canada, 25%. Some suggest that maybe the fact that Elon Musk has a factory in Shanghai brought down the tariffs on China. Your thoughts?

LORI WALLACH: The reason probably for the 10% is that there are already around 20% tariffs on two-thirds of all of our trade with China still in place from 2018 during the first Trump term, and then President Biden raised tariffs on EVs, on solar and other things to 100% with respect to China. So this is 10% on top of the existing 20%. So, actually, now everything will have at least 10%, but a lot of stuff will have 30% or 100% coming from China.

But, you know, here’s the question. Again, tariffs, legitimate tool, but what is the purpose here? If you’re trying to fix the redone NAFTA, the so-called U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which was Trump’s redo of NAFTA, then there’s a built-in six-year renegotiation that basically starts now. If you can’t fix it, you get rid of the whole thing. But there’s a process to do that. You know, USMCA was supposed to bring down the NAFTA trade deficit and end job offshoring. Instead, since 2020, the trade deficit has doubled, and offshoring has continued, so that Trump trade negotiation clearly needs some fixing. But there’s a way to do that. It’s not the tariffs.

Or, if you’re trying to generally use tariffs to try and rebalance our chronic trade imbalance, which is promoted in deindustrialization and income inequality, well, then, you use a variety of tools together, including to make sure that the companies that have had record profits from this old system pay for the transition by having — making it easier to organize unions and doing anti-price-gouging policies, so companies don’t use their monopoly power to raise prices.

Even if you’re trying to stop the flow of fentanyl, bizarrely, if you actually read the executive order, there’s a loophole the president has authority, called the de minimis loophole — we’ve talked about it before — the president has existing authority to close. And they still allow informal entries of these 4 million packages a day in which the fentanyl is buried, which he could have fixed if he really was focusing on drugs. So, it is a very mysterious and potentially damaging state of affairs.

AMY GOODMAN: And in the case of fentanyl, I think in 2024 there were like 43 pounds of fentanyl that was seized at the American-Canadian border. I think more went the other way. I also want to turn to the UAW President Shawn Fain on tariffs. He wrote on social media, “The UAW supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy. We do not support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy,” he said. Lori Wallach, your response?

LORI WALLACH: So, I think UAW President Shawn Fain had it exactly right. And actually, in my long tweet thread about these tariffs, I cited him, because, again, as I started out, tariffs are a really powerful tool, and when used particularly in combination with things like investment policies to try and actually spur domestic production capacity, new factories, creating demand for American-made, high-wage, high-environmental-standards goods, by putting together a package of policies and keeping them in place — not just random tariff here, could go away tomorrow — you actually incentivize the kind of investment you could rebalance. We certainly don’t want to hold on to the old, devastating neoliberal trade agenda.

But the random tariffs on Mexico and Canada, compared to a strategic use of tariffs with a mix of other tools, are — the random tariffs aren’t going to get you the outcome you want, even on the fentanyl — again, closing the de minimis loophole, a thing a president has authority to do, stopping the ability of 4 million packages, mainly e-commerce packages, mainly from China, to come in uninspected, without the normal customs information. So, they closed half of this in this executive order. They said that stuff can’t slip in without paying tariffs anymore. OK. But then they allow the stuff to come in uninspected. And so, ostensibly, if you’re trying to stop fentanyl, probably more important than the “pay the tariff” is the “don’t sneak in the stuff uninspected.” But they didn’t do that. This is something they could actually fix tomorrow if they wanted to. The bigger use of trade policies to try and fix our mess, what they did, or may or may not impose tonight at midnight, doesn’t fit into an agenda of making things better for working people or the planet, not here, not anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about immigrants. AP cites a new study by Warwick McKibbin and Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The study found, quote, “For Mexico, a 25 percent tariff would be catastrophic. Moreover, the economic decline caused by the tariff could increase the incentives for Mexican immigrants to cross the border … into the US — directly contradicting another Trump administration priority.” Lori Wallach?

LORI WALLACH: Well, I mean, this is, again, the perverse irony. There was a Trump trade plan issued on January 20th that laid out in an orderly fashion a rational sense of how to do a new trade agenda. This is unrelated to that, because, for instance, one of the things that spurred the original wave of migration from Mexico to the United States was NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which displaced millions of campesino peasant families off of their rural livelihoods by dumping subsidized U.S. corn into Mexico and suddenly destroying the livelihoods of millions of people, who first went to the border, to the low-wage maquiladora plants — couldn’t make a living there, couldn’t feed your family on $5 a day — and then used migration to try and come to make a living for themselves and their families, in a way forced by this economic displacement of the neoliberal trade agreements. And we saw that repeated with Central America Free Trade Agreement, an increased migration from Central America.

So, if we want to get to the root causes of the neoliberal economic policies imposed through these so-called trade agreements and junk them, yes, that has to happen. Is what 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, unrelated to any of those economic goals, going to help the situation versus make it worse? No. Are tariffs part of the solution? Yes. Is this use of tariffs going to help? No, it could make things much worse.

AMY GOODMAN: Lori Wallach, I want to thank you for being with us, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project and a board member of the Citizens Trade Campaign.

[admin]

“Time for It to Die”: Trump & Musk Back Closing USAID as Freeze on Foreign Aid Threatens Millions
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
February 03, 2025
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/3/u ... transcript



The future of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is uncertain after Elon Musk said President Trump had agreed to shut it down. The Tesla billionaire and presidential adviser has inserted himself into the inner workings of the federal government, gaining access to sensitive computer systems and making sweeping changes for which he has no clear authority. Over the weekend, the USAID website and social media channels were taken offline, and two top security officials at the aid agency were placed on administrative leave after attempting to block members of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing USAID’s classified systems, including personnel files. Musk claimed in a series of posts on his website X that USAID is a “viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America,” and staff were instructed to stay away from the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday. “What we are seeing … are attacks against it as a corrupt and illegal organization by people who know nothing about it. They are manufacturing these things out of whole cloth,” says former senior USAID staffer Jeremy Konyndyk, now president of Refugees International. “It’s really important to understand that a lot of what USAID does saves lives every single day.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The future of USAID — that’s the U.S. Agency for International Development — is uncertain, after Elon Musk said President Trump has agreed to shut it down. After a dramatic spat with the USAID senior officials and workers played out over the weekend, early this morning Musk went on X, the social media platform he owns, and claimed the agency is, quote, “beyond repair.”

ELON MUSK: And USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple, there’s — you’ve just got to, basically, get rid of the whole thing.

AMY GOODMAN: USAID’s website has been down since Saturday. Workers have been instructed not to come to work at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. It’s closed today. Hundreds of workers have been reportedly locked out of USAID’s computer systems overnight, with dozens more put on leave. This includes the two top USAID security officials, who were placed on administrative leave on Saturday night after they blocked members of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, from accessing USAID’s classified systems, including personnel files and information about contracts — for example, with Musk’s rivals. Since then, four members of DOGE have reportedly been granted access to the agency’s systems, now that the security officials are out of the way.

Meanwhile, last week, Reuters reported hundreds of USAID contractors were put on unpaid leave — some were being terminated — after Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on U.S. foreign aid.

On Sunday, Elon Musk posted a series of comments on X attacking USAID. He wrote, quote, ”USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.” He also said, quote, ”USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” and, quote, “Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19, that killed millions of people?” unquote.

President Trump weighed in Sunday night.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out. USAID, run by radical lunatics, and we’re getting them out. And then we’ll make a decision.

AMY GOODMAN: Doctors Without Borders has warned the dismantling of USAID, the U.S. humanitarian aid system, quote, “will cause an unmitigated humanitarian disaster affecting millions of the world’s most vulnerable people,” unquote.

Congressional Democrats also raised alarm over Musk’s move to access classified material at USAID. New York Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media, quote, “This is a five alarm fire. The people elected Donald Trump to be President — not Elon Musk. Having an unelected billionaire, with his own foreign debts and motives, raiding US classified information is a grave threat to national security. This should not be a partisan issue,” AOC wrote.

USAID was established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.

For more, we go to Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. He previously worked in several senior positions at USAID. He was most recently USAID’s lead official for COVID-19 in the Biden administration.

Thanks so much for being with us, Jeremy. Respond to what has taken place, as late as just in the last few hours, when the workers at the headquarters of USAID were told to stay home, the office closed.

JEREMY KONYNDYK: So, over the weekend, we have seen a concerted campaign of disinformation about what USAID is, about what USAID does, a total — “mischaracterization” really doesn’t cover it. It is outright disinformation. You heard it from Elon Musk in the clips that you played earlier. You know, it bears no relation whatsoever to the reality of what USAID’s work has been for 60-plus years.

USAID does development and relief programs around the world. It has helped to save 25 million lives from HIV. It has responded to famines and earthquakes. That was the work that I did, in part, while I was there during the Obama years. It has promoted democracy.

You know, what we are seeing instead are these attacks against it as a sort of corrupt and illegal organization by people who know nothing about it. They are manufacturing these things out of whole cloth. And, you know, you have to ask: Well, why are they doing this? And why are they targeting USAID? Because the stakes here are not just that we lose what USAID has done for American values and interests and has done for the world. What we are losing here is the integrity, really, of the federal government. If they can do this to an independent federal agency that is mandated by Congress, they can really do it anywhere.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain the battle that took place this weekend that led the two top security folks at USAID to be put on leave on Saturday night, and also the kind of information that, now that they are removed, Elon Musk has. What kind of security clearance does he have? What kind of conflict of interest investigation has been done of him, background checks, to get classified access? And is it true that he’s getting information about contracts of his rivals?

JEREMY KONYNDYK: So, I have not seen any reporting that suggests that Elon Musk has a valid security clearance, particularly to access the systems that it seems like they were trying to access, which were tapped into the highest-level national security networks that the U.S. government has.

USAID is a national security agency. You know, it conducts foreign policy work. And as such, in its, what are called SCIFs — those are the rooms where special compartmentalized information can be stored. It has a couple of SCIFs, as all the national security organizations do. And most staff at USAID rarely go in there and never need to consume that information. When I was working on COVID, I barely went in that room. But it exists. It’s there for some of the programs that need it.

And Elon, through that, if he has access to that, if his minions on this DOGE group of twentysomethings have access to that, that is some of the most sensitive national security information that the U.S. government possesses. None of them, as far as I have heard, have a valid clearance for that. And I think what you saw or reported of the two security staff is that they tried — as they are legally required to do, they tried to block people without a valid clearance from breaching classified information. And for that, they were pushed out of the agency. And reportedly, the Trump-appointed chief of staff, who had just arrived, also resigned over this. So, I mean, that should be a huge, huge, huge alarm bell.

You know, in terms of specific contract information, I’m not sure what rivals he might be looking for. I don’t get the sense he’s looking for a competitive edge here or something. I think he is just looking to destroy this agency, because if they can destroy this agency without any consultation with Congress, without any public disclosure of what they’re doing, without even an executive order giving them fig leaf from the president to do this, if a private citizen can just go in and destroy a federal agency, then we are in a dire, dire place as a government and as a country.

AMY GOODMAN: Africa CDC Director-General Dr. Jean Kaseya explained the scale of the aid Africa receives from the U.S. and the possible effects of the pause. He was speaking on CNN last week.

DR. JEAN KASEYA: In 2024, we got $8 billion of support from the U.S. to African continent, and 73% went to the health sector. It means today the U.S. is the main partner that we have bilaterally and also multilaterally to a number of organs and organizations. What we see as a trend today in Africa, it’s not just the pause from the U.S. government, but it’s also the reduction from assistance from other Western countries. And that one is a major threat to not only Africa, but to the world. And as Africa CDC is projecting with this trend to have around 2 to 4 million additional deaths annually, and that one will also increase the likelihood occurrency of pandemics.

AMY GOODMAN: The former head of global health at USAID, Dr. Atul Gawande, also posted on social media Saturday, quote, “I oversaw global health programs at @USAID. They reached 100s of millions of people, added 6 extra years to the lifespan of children in partner countries, and were eradicating health threats worldwide. What insanity and cruelty to break that,” he said.

And then you have one of the last hospitals in central Gaza being closed down this weekend because they lost their USAID funding, this at a time when the U.S. government, Trump, has approved 2,000-pound bombs being sent to Israel. When it comes to helping the folks of Palestine, the Palestinians in Gaza, their aid is being cut even further, Jeremy Konyndyk.

JEREMY KONYNDYK: Yes, and I think it’s really important to understand that a lot of what USAID does saves lives every single day. I ran the humanitarian team there for several years. We would respond to famines. We would respond to earthquakes, tsunamis. We led the response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014. You know, these are lifesaving activities. Twenty million people are on AIDS drugs in Africa right now and around the world through USAID and U.S. government support. All of that is at risk.

So, the stakes here really are that global health threats that could threaten the United States go unchecked. We pull back the tools that we have. The stakes are that hundreds of thousands of people could die of starvation in Sudan as we pull back the humanitarian assistance amidst the famine there. The ceasefire in Gaza, which is premised in part on greater access to humanitarian aid, could be put at risk by pulling back humanitarian assistance there. And the ability of the U.S. to support human rights and support democracy around the world, which is a really core part, as well, of what USAID does — and it’s why it’s targeted by countries like Russia, who are, frankly, celebrating this openly this weekend — that is really important, and that will be lost, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Konyndyk, I want to thank you so much for being with us, president of Refugees International, formally held several senior positions at USAID, most recently USAID’s lead official for COVID-19 in the Biden administration.

[admin]

Acting FBI Director Pushes Back on Trump Attempt to Wrongfully Fire FBI Agents Who Worked J6 Cases: [acting FBI director Brian Driscoll on Friday refuses justice department order that he assist in the firings of Agents involved in January 6 Riot cases, pushing back so forcefully that some FBI officials feared he would be dismissed]
by Glenn Kirschner
Feb 2, 2025

NBC News reported that a "Senior FBI Official Forcefully Resisted Trump Administration Firings." This is an important development in the effort to combat lawlessness and abuse of power a Trump administration intent on extracting revenge against FBI agents who protected the American people and American democracy by working on January 6 cases.

This video reviews the new reporting and the implications of FBI leadership willing to resist presidential lawlessness.



Transcript

So friends how's this for a headline
senior FBI official forcefully resisted
Trump Administration
firings that's a headline so nice I'm
going to read it twice senior FBI
official forcefully resisted Trump
Administration
firings Points of Light my friends
Points of
Light let's talk about that because
Justice
[Music]
matters hey all Glen kirschner here so
friends this particular corruption and
abusive Power by Donald Trump is pretty
easy to understand stick with me here
thousands of FBI agents investigated the
crimes that Donald Trump's angry mob
committed at the US capital on January
6th crimes we saw with our own
eyes those FBI agents those men and
women did the hard honest ethical
honorable work of protecting we the
people and protecting American
democracy and as than thanks for their
service Donald Trump is seeking revenge
against them trying to wrongfully and
unlawfully fire
them I stand with the men and women of
the FBI and I strongly suspect you do
too let's start with the new reporting
This from NBC news that headline one
more time senior FBI official forcefully
resisted Trump Administration
firings and that article begins acting
FBI director Brian Driscoll on Friday
refused a justice department order that
he assist in the firings of Agents
involved in January 6 Riot cases pushing
back so forcefully that some FBI
officials feared he would be dismissed
multiple current and former FBI
officials told NBC News the justice
department Department ultimately did not
dismiss Driscoll the head of the
bureau's Newark field office who is
temporarily serving as its acting
director that's right friends the guy
who just forcefully resisted Trump is
actually Donald Trump's acting FBI
director my editorial
Edition the article continues the Senate
is currently considering whether cash
Patel Trump's pick for FBI director
should be confirmed a longtime critic of
the bureau's investigations of trump and
January 6th rioter Patel promised
Senators at his confirmation hearing
that no FBI officials would be
retaliated against quote all FBI
employees will be protected against
political retribution Patel said under
oath on Thursday and just over 24 hours
later Driscoll notified the FBI
Workforce that he had been ordered to
remove eight senior FBI Executives by
Emil B the acting Deputy attorney
general and Trump's former personal
defense
lawyer Amil B Trump's former criminal
defense attorney and one of Trump's
current henchmen who is apparently all
too willing to carry out Donald Trump's
improper directives to wrongfully
terminate FBI
officials my editorial addition the
article
continues Driscoll also said he had been
told to turn over the names of every FBI
employee involved in investigating
January 6
riers Driscoll stated that the eight
Executives had been been forced out but
did not say whether he would turn over
the broader list of January 6 related
FBI investigators a list that he noted
encompasses thousands of FBI employees
including him Driscoll
himself a former member of the FBI's
Elite hostage Rescue Team Driscoll
promised agents that he would follow the
law and existing FBI policies
and if he does he will continue to
resist to push back to refuse to carry
out Donald Trump and Emil
B's unlawful commands to terminate
people for doing their job investigating
crime protecting the American people
again yes my editorial Edition this
quote from Driscoll quote as we've said
since the moment we agreed to take on on
these roles we are going to follow the
law follow FBI policy and do what's in
the best interest of the workforce and
the American people always he wrote and
friends this next passage may actually
be the most
important in a message that circulated
widely among Bureau Personnel an FBI
agents summarized what happened as quote
bottom line doj came over and wanted to
fire a bunch of j6 Agents Driscoll is an
absolute stud held his ground and told
White House proxy doj 2 F
off legal experts said that few if any
of the firings carried out so far by the
Trump Administration have been legal
under Civil Service laws because the
employees were not afforded due
process the Trump White House argues
though that the president has the
absolute right to fire anyone he wishes
in the executive
branch the Supreme Court has ruled that
federal employees have a right to aering
before they are disciplined or
terminated Joyce Vance a former US
attorney and NBC News legal contributor
called the firings illegal quote career
federal employees can be fired for
conduct or performance issues not
because they failed to demonstrate
political loyalty to the current
incumbent of the White House said Vance
Trump ignored controlling law and
regulations to do this and unless the
Supreme Court changes their
interpretation any firing of permanent
members of the Civil Service should not
stand of course even even if some of the
employees Sue andwin they said their
Public Service careers have been
irreparably damaged if not
ended so acting FBI director Brian
Driscoll is standing up to Donald
Trump's abuse of
power you know friends as a federal
prosecutor I had the pleasure the
privilege the honor of working with the
FBI and I was uniformly impressed by the
men and women of the
FBI and Donald Trump is trying to
unlawfully fire them for doing their job
a democracy saving job and friends
here's one thing I can tell you about
FBI special agents the ones I know the
ones I worked cases
with they're not going to take kindly to
Donald Trump's corruption and abuse of
power no I don't expect they will just
lay down and take it because to
them like to
us
Justice
matters thank you acting FBI director
Brian Driscoll for being a point of
light amidst the Trump induced
Darkness.

**************************

Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings: Brian Driscoll, the acting FBI director and head of the bureau's Newark field office, pushed back so aggressively that some feared he would be dismissed.
by Ken Dilanian, Tom Winter, Jonathan Dienst and Ryan J. Reilly
NBC News
Feb. 1, 2025, 2:07 PM MST
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nation ... rcna190301

Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll on Friday refused a Justice Department order that he assist in the firing of agents involved in Jan. 6 riot cases, pushing back so forcefully that some FBI officials feared he would be dismissed, multiple current and former FBI officials told NBC News.

The Justice Department ultimately did not dismiss Driscoll, the head of the bureau’s Newark field office who is temporarily serving as its acting director.

The Senate is currently considering whether Kash Patel, President Trump's pick for FBI director, should be confirmed. A longtime critic of the bureau's investigations of Trump and Jan. 6th rioters, Patel promised Senators at his confirmation hearing that no FBI officials would be retaliated against.

“All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel said under oath on Thursday.

Just over 24 hours later, Driscoll notified the FBI workforce that he had been ordered to remove eight senior FBI executives by Emil Bove, the acting Deputy Attorney General and Trump’s former personal defense lawyer.

Driscoll also said he had been told to turn over the names of every FBI employee involved in investigating Jan. 6 rioters.

Driscoll stated that the eight executives had been forced out but did not say whether he would turn over the broader list of Jan. 6-related FBI investigators — a list that he noted encompasses thousands of FBI employees, including him.

A former member of the FBI’s elite hostage rescue team, Driscoll promised agents that he would follow the law and existing FBI policies.

"As we’ve said since the moment we agreed to take on these roles, we are going to follow the law, follow FBI policy, and do what’s in the best interest of the workforce and the American people — always,” he wrote.

In a message that circulated widely among bureau personnel, an FBI agent summarized what happened as: “Bottom line — DOJ came over and wanted to fire a bunch of J6 agents. Driscoll is an absolute stud. Held his ground and told WH proxy, DOJ, to F--- Off.”

The FBI and the Justice Department declined to comment. A senior FBI official disputed the accounts of the current and former officials saying, “It’s not true.”

A former FBI official who knows Driscoll well said, “He pushed back hard.”

Agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases targeted

It’s not known whether anyone other than the eight senior FBI executives have been separated from the bureau. One official familiar with the matter said that top Trump administration officials have made it clear that they want at least some of the FBI agents who pursued Jan. 6 cases to be fired, just as multiple DOJ prosecutors involved with the Jan. 6 prosecutions were fired.

The official said the Trump administration wants this to happen quickly but has been told by FBI officials that misconduct allegations at the bureau involve a formal review process.

The accounts of Driscoll’s actions shed new light on a chaotic series of events over the last 48 hours that began with the news that the Trump administration was seeking to purge the top ranks of the FBI’s career civil servants.

“Late this afternoon, I received a memo from the acting Deputy Attorney General notifying me that eight senior FBI executives are to be terminated by specific dates, unless these employees have retired beforehand," Driscoll wrote. "I have been personally in touch with each of these impacted employees."

He said in the memo that he had also been directed to provide the DOJ by noon on Tuesday a list of all FBI employees involved in Capitol riot cases, and also those involved in a case against a Hamas leader.

No one contacted by NBC News had a sense of the new administration’s interest in the Hamas case, but the focus on Jan. 6 was clear. The Trump administration apparently believes that all of the Jan. 6 cases should not have been brought. [!!!]

Since it was the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history, thousands of FBI personnel were involved, as Driscoll acknowledged in his memo.

“We understand that this request encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts,” he wrote. “I am one of those employees, as is acting Deputy Director (Rob) Kissane.”

FBI agents encouraged

FBI agents were heartened by Driscoll's memo, a source said, which many saw as an attempt by Driscoll to make the workforce and the public aware of what he was being asked to do.

“He was trying to do right by the workforce,” one person familiar with the thinking of agents told NBC News. “He’s putting it in writing and naming names.”

A separate DOJ memo obtained by NBC News identified the employees who were forced out.

The list included four top FBI managers: Robert Wells, who oversaw the national security branch; Ryan Young, of the intelligence branch; Robert Nordwall, of criminal and cyber response; Jackie Maguire, of science and technology. All of those people were eligible to retire and many of them did so.

The memo also identified two heads of field offices, Jeffrey Veltri in Miami and David Sundberg in Washington, D.C.

Also on the list was Dena Perkins, an acting section chief in the security division who was involved in a controversial disciplinary proceeding against a conservative FBI agent.

The list did not include Spencer Evans, the special agent in charge in Las Vegas, who sent a message to colleagues on Friday that he was being dismissed by FBI headquarters. “I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock.” It’s unclear whether he has now been given a reprieve.

Nor did the list include executive assistant director Arlene Gaylord, a 33-year FBI veteran who was not retirement-eligible and requested that she be allowed to work in another assignment until she did so. An FBI official familiar with the matter said she had been accommodated.

Experts say the firings are illegal

Legal experts said that few, if any, of the firings carried out so far by the Trump administration have been legal under civil service laws because the employees were not afforded due process.

The Trump White House argues, though, that the president has the absolute right to fire anyone he wishes in the executive branch. The Supreme Court has ruled that federal employees have a right to a hearing before they are disciplined or terminated.

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney and NBC News legal contributor, called the firings illegal.

“Career federal employees can be fired for conduct or performance issues, not because they failed to demonstrate political loyalty to the current incumbent of the White House,” said Vance. “Trump ignored controlling law and regulations to do this, and unless the Supreme Court changes their interpretation, any firing of permanent members of the civil service should not stand.”

Even if some of the employees sue and win, they said their public service careers have been irreparably damaged, if not ended.

One of the Jan. 6 prosecutors fired on Friday told NBC News that they “did nothing wrong” and had no regrets about their work. The person, who asked not to named due to fear of retaliation, said it was discouraging to be fired after seeing Trump pardon violent rioters who attacked police officers.

“We’ve all been looking over our shoulders, like, ‘Is this the day that we’re gonna get fired?’ Because we were doing our jobs?” the fired prosecutor told NBC News. “We’ve been forced to dismiss all of the cases that we’ve been working on of all these people that were very violent offenders. It’s been awful.”

Current and former FBI agents say the purge at the bureau has had a shattering effect on the morale, sending a message that agents who work on cases that anger someone in the Trump administration could be targeted.

“Who right now would want to work on a case that would get them crosswise with the administration?” one former FBI official asked. “They will come after you.”

[admin]

Part 1 of 2

United States District Court for the District of Columbia: National Council of Nonprofits, Plaintiffs, v. Office of Management and Budget, Defendants, Civil Action No. 25 - 239 (LLA); Memorandum Opinion and Order: "Defendants are enjoined from implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards
by USDC Judge Loren L. Alikhan
February 3, 2025

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

NATIONAL COUNCIL OF NONPROFITS, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, et al.,
Defendants.

ORDERED that Defendants are enjoined from implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards; it is further

ORDERED that Defendants must provide written notice of the court’s temporary restraining order to all agencies to which OMB Memorandum M-25-13 was addressed. The written notice shall instruct those agencies that they may not take any steps to implement, give effect to, or reinstate under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal Funds under all open awards. It shall also instruct those agencies to release any disbursements on open awards that were paused due to OMB Memorandum M-25-13; it is further

ORDERED that this Order shall apply to the maximum extent provided for by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d)(2) and 5 U.S.C. §§ 705 and 706.

Civil Action No. 25 - 239 (LLA)

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

This matter is before the court on Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 5, and Defendants' Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 21. Upon consideration of the parties’ briefs, oral argument, and for the reasons explained below, the court grants Plaintiffs' motion, denies Defendants’ motion, and enters a temporary restraining order against Defendants pursuant to the terms outlined at the end of this order.

I. FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

A. Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13

On January 27, 2025, Matthew J. Vaeth, Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), issued a memorandum (“M-25-13”) directing federal agencies to “complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their Federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders.” ECF No. 1 ¶ 15. The memorandum further stated that, “[ i]n the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to [the] obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency acti[vities] that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.” Id. ¶ 16; Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, Exec. Off. of the President, Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs (Jan. 27, 2025), https://perma.cc/69QB-VFG8 (“OMB Pause Memorandum”).

The memorandum defined “Federal financial assistance” as: “(i) all forms of assistance listed in paragraphs (1) and (2) of the definition of this term at 2 [C.F.R. §] 200.1; and (ii) assistance received or administered by recipients or subrecipients of any type except for assistance received directly by individuals.” Id. ¶ 17. This includes all federal assistance in the form of grants, loans, loan guarantees, and insurance. Id. ¶ 18; see 2 C.F.R. § 200.1. As relevant executive orders, it listed:

▪ Protecting the American People Against Invasion (Jan. 20, 2025);
▪ Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan. 20, 2025);
▪ Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements (Jan. 20, 2025);
▪ Unleashing American Energy (Jan. 20, 2025);
▪ Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Jan. 20, 2025);
▪ Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025); and
▪ Enforcing the Hyde Amendment (Jan. 24, 2025).

OMB Pause Memorandum, at 1-2.

The memorandum stated that “[t]he temporary pause [would] become effective on January 28, 2025 at 5:00 PM.” Id. at 2. During the pause, agencies were directed to “submit to OMB detailed information on any programs, projects[,] or activities subject to [the] pause” on or before February 10, 2025. Id. at 2.

B. Complaint, Emergency Hearing, and Administrative Stay

Shortly after noon on January 28, several coalitions of nonprofit organizations brought this action against OMB and Acting Director Vaeth arguing that OMB’s action violated the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq. ECF No. 1. Plaintiffs alleged that the implicated federal grants and funding “are the lifeblood of operations and programs for many . . . nonprofits, and [that] even a short pause in funding . . . could deprive people and communities of their life-saving services.” Id. ¶ 32. They argue that Defendants’ action was arbitrary and capricious, violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, and exceeded OMB’s statutory authority. Id. ¶¶ 43-61.

Along with their complaint, Plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order (“TRO”) “barring the OMB and all of its officers, employees, and agents from taking any steps to implement, apply, or enforce Memo M-25-13.” ECF No. 5, at 18. Defendants entered an appearance, ECF No. 9, and the court held an emergency hearing at 4:00 p.m. on January 28 to discern the parties’ positions with respect to the issuance of a brief administrative stay pending the resolution of Plaintiffs’ request for a TRO, Minute Order (D.D.C. Jan. 28, 2025).

Given the extreme time constraints of the litigation and the magnitude of the legal issues, the court entered a brief administrative stay to permit the parties to fully brief the TRO motion and “buy[] the court time to deliberate.”1 ECF No. 13, at 3 (quoting United States v. Texas, 144 S. Ct. 797, 798 (2024) (Barrett, J., concurring)). The administrative stay prohibited Defendants “from implementing OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards” until 5:00 p.m. on February 3, 2025. Id. at 4-5. The court also set a hearing on Plaintiffs’ TRO motion for 11:00 a.m. on February 3, 2025. Id. at 5.

C. Rescission of Memorandum M-25-13 and Aftermath

On January 29, the day after the court entered its administrative stay, OMB issued a new memorandum (“M-25-14”) that purported to rescind M-25-13. See ECF Nos. 18, 18-1. The new memorandum consisted of two sentences: “OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President’s Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel.” ECF No. 18-1.

Shortly after this “rescission” was issued, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced from her official social media account that the new memorandum was “NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.” Karoline Leavitt, X (formerly Twitter) (Jan. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/99C4-5V6G. Instead, she stated that “[ i]t [was] simply a rescission of [OMB memorandum M-25-13].” Id. She further explained that the purpose of the rescission was “[t]o end any confusion created by the court’s injunction.” Id. The entire post may be viewed below:

Karoline Leavitt
@PressSec
This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze.
It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.
Why? To end any confusion created by the court's injunction.
The President's EO's on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.
11:40 AM · Jan 29, 2025

Id.

On January 30, Defendants filed their opposition to Plaintiffs’ TRO motion and concurrently moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. ECF Nos. 20, 21. As of February 1, both motions were fully briefed. ECF Nos. 24, 25, 26.

D. Temporary Restraining Order Hearing

On the morning of February 3, 2025, the court held a hearing on Plaintiffs’ motion for a TRO. See Minute Entry, (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). At the conclusion of the hearing, the court explained that it was inclined to grant a TRO and deny Defendants’ motion to dismiss. Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits v. Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). Pursuant to the court’s request, Plaintiffs submitted a proposed TRO order shortly after the hearing concluded, and Defendants responded to the proposed order by mid-afternoon.

E. Parallel Litigation in the District of Rhode Island

On the same day Plaintiffs filed this suit, and several hours before memorandum M-25-13’s pause was to go into effect, twenty-two states and the District of Columbia filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island and sought a TRO to halt implementation of the memorandum. See Compl., New York v. Trump, No. 25-CV-39 (D.R.I. Jan. 28, 2025), ECF No. 1. The district court scheduled a hearing for January 29 at 3:00 p.m.

Following the hearing, which took place after OMB had “rescinded” memorandum M-25-13, the court granted the States’ request and issued a TRO on January 31, 2025. TRO, New York, No. 25-CV-39 (D.R.I. Jan. 31, 2025), ECF No. 50. The restraining order prohibited the defendants (President Trump, OMB, and eleven federal agencies) from “paus[ing], freez[ing], imped[ing], block[ing], cancel[ing], or terminat[ing] [their] compliance with awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the [plaintiff] States.” Id. at 11. The order also prohibited the defendants “from reissuing, adopting, implementing, or otherwise giving effect to the [OMB memorandum M-25-13] under any other name or title, . . . such as the continued implementation identified by the White House Press Secretary’s statement of January 29, 2025.” Id. at 12. Finally, the court directed the plaintiff States to file their forthcoming motion for a preliminary injunction expeditiously. Id. at 11.

On the morning of February 3, the defendants filed a notice of compliance with the court’s TRO. Notice of Compliance with Court’s TRO, New York, No. 25-CV-39 (D.R.I. Feb. 3, 2025), ECF No. 51. In it, the defendants explained that they had provided written notice to all defendant agencies on January 31 to inform them of the TRO and instruct them to comply with its restrictions. Id. ¶ 1. The defendants also notified the court that they believed certain terms of the TRO “constitute[d] significant intrusions on the Executive Branch’s lawful authorities and the separation of powers.” Id. ¶ 2.

The litigation remains ongoing.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Jurisdiction

Before reaching the merits, Defendants raise two threshold jurisdictional arguments. First, they argue that Plaintiffs lack standing because they have not adequately alleged injury in fact, causation, or redressability. ECF No. 21-1, at 7-11. Second, they claim that the case is now moot because OMB rescinded memorandum M-25-13 after Plaintiffs filed suit. Id. at 6. The court is unpersuaded on both counts.

1. Standing

A plaintiff seeking relief in federal court must establish standing by showing: (1) that it suffered an injury in fact, which is a concrete and particularized harm that is actual or imminent, rather than hypothetical, (2) a causal connection between the injury and the challenged conduct that is fairly traceable to the defendant’s actions, and (3) a non-speculative likelihood that the injury will be redressed by a decision in the plaintiff’s favor. Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). Standing is “assessed as of the time a suit commences,” meaning that post-complaint events will not deprive a plaintiff of standing. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S. v. EPA, 642 F.3d 192, 200 (D.C. Cir. 2011). Defendants argue that Plaintiffs fail to satisfy all three elements of standing. The court disagrees.

a. Injury in fact

When a plaintiff association tries to sue on behalf of its members, it must demonstrate that: “(a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization’s purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.”2 Metro. Wash. Chapter, Associated Builders & Contractors, Inc. v. District of Columbia, 62 F.4th 567, 572 (D.C. Cir. 2023) (quoting Hunt v. Wash. State Apple Advert Comm’n, 432 U.S. 333, 343 (1977)). When facing a motion to dismiss, an association plaintiff “need only make a plausible allegation of facts establishing each element of standing.” Cutler v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 797 F.3d 1173, 1179 (D.C. Cir. 2015).

Defendants claim that Plaintiffs have failed to “identif[y] a single member who . . . would be injured,” ECF No. 21-1, at 9 (quoting Chamber of Commerce, 642 F.3d at 200), but that is incorrect. Plaintiffs allege that even a temporary pause in funding to their members, such as the American Public Health Association and Main Street Alliance, would destroy their ability to provide medical and low-income childcare services. ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 33-34, 36-40. On top of these economic injuries, Plaintiffs’ members face First Amendment harms because the memorandum targets funds that relate to “DEI [and] woke gender ideology.” OMB Pause Memorandum, at 2; ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 35-36, 42. Defendants reply that Plaintiffs “must present more than allegations of a subjective chill” and need to allege “present objective harm or a threat of specific future harm.” ECF No. 26, at 3 (quoting Bigelow v. Virginia, 421 U.S. 809, 816-17 (1975)). At this early stage, Plaintiffs have done exactly that: they claim that Defendants have singled out their funding programs (in other words, their economic lifelines) based on their exercise of speech and association.

Defendants further argue that a temporary pause would be far too brief to cause lasting damage, but the record belies these claims. First, Defendants have no factual basis on which to build such a counterargument. The pause outlined in memorandum M-25-13 is effectively indefinite with no clear parameters for when it will end. OMB Pause Memorandum, at 2. Second, Plaintiffs have provided numerous declarations showing that many organizations need weekly injections of federal funds in order to continue operating.3 One health center pays its employees “biweekly, on Thursdays,” requiring it to “draw down grant funds on the preceding Tuesday” so that they reach the health center’s bank account by Wednesday. ECF No. 24-4 ¶ 6. Some of those employees “live paycheck to paycheck,” meaning that a single missed payment could prevent them from buying groceries or paying rent. Id. ¶ 7. Separately, a member of a tribal organization was forced to lay off two employees on January 28 because it could not access its grant funds that day. ECF No. 24-5 ¶ 13. And another nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness was forced to suspend a birth certificate and identification card program just so that it could keep its employees on payroll. ECF No. 24-7 ¶ 20-21.

Defendants also speculate that, at least for some organizations, OMB may have pre-approved certain programs so as to prevent any interruption in disbursements. Unfortunately for Defendants, the precise opposite appears to be true. According to Plaintiffs’ declarations, many organizations were blocked from accessing their funds well before 5:00 p.m. on January 28, when the freeze was set to begin. See, e.g., ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶ 8 (unable to access fund portal during the day on January 28); 24-7 ¶ 13 (same); 24-8 ¶ 9 (unable to access fund portal on January 27).

The alleged injuries to Plaintiffs’ many members are sufficiently concrete and imminent to satisfy the first element of standing. For many, the harms caused by the freeze are non-speculative, impending, and potentially catastrophic. Defendants’ assertion that these injuries are nothing more than “a setback to [Plaintiffs’] abstract social interests,” ECF No. 26, at 3-4 (quoting Food & Drug Admin. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Med., 602 U.S. 367, 394 (2024)), is blatantly contradicted by the record. Plaintiffs have adequately shown injury in fact.

b. Causation

Defendants next try to break the causal chain between memorandum M-25-13 and Plaintiffs’ harms. Defendants argue that with the memorandum now rescinded, any lingering pauses in funding are not fairly traceable to the memorandum itself. Instead, they say, Plaintiffs must take up their grievances with the individual agencies responsible for disbursing their funds. ECF Nos. 21-1, at 10-11; 26, at 5-7.

At a high level, Defendants are correct that harms caused by third parties are generally not traceable to the defendant. See Fla. Audubon Soc’y v. Bentsen, 94 F.3d 658, 664 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (en banc) (explaining that traceability must be to “the challenged acts of the defendant, not of some absent third party”). And where causation “hinge[s] on the independent choices of [a] regulated third party,” like the states or other federal actors, it is the plaintiff’s burden “to adduce facts showing that those choices have been or will be made in such manner as to produce causation.” Ctr. for L. & Educ. v. Dep’t of Educ., 396 F.3d 1152, 1161 (D.C. Cir. 2005). Plaintiffs claim that memorandum M-25-13 “was not a suggestion but a command to agencies, and [the agencies] have treated it as such.” ECF No. 24, at 17. They further allege that their economic and constitutional harms stem directly from the memorandum’s directives, making OMB and Acting Director Vaeth the proper defendants. Id.

In their briefing, Defendants rely on two cases to make their counterargument. See ECF No. 21-1, at 10-11. In Louisiana ex rel. Landry v. Biden, 64 F.4th 674 (5th Cir. 2023), the Fifth Circuit held that an OMB working group’s “guidance” and publication of cost estimates did not confer standing on plaintiffs who sought to block its effects, id. at 681-82. As an initial matter, the Fifth Circuit’s ruling had nothing to do with the causation element of standing. The court only considered whether the “possibility of regulation” was an “injury in fact.” Id. (quoting Nat’l Ass’n of Home Builders v. EPA, 667 F.3d 6, 13 (D.C. Cir. 2011)). But even if the court were to extend its reasoning to causation, Defendants’ argument still fails. The executive order in Louisiana “d[id] not require any action from federal agencies.” Id. at 681. Agencies were not mandated to “implement the Interim Estimates” and could “exercise discretion” in choosing whether or not they applied. Id. In contrast, memorandum M-25-13 states in no uncertain terms (and in bold typeface, no less) that “Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to [the] obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.” OMB Pause Memorandum, at 2. Such a directive leaves no room for discretion. Louisiana is therefore inapposite.

Defendants’ second case fares no better. In Jacobson v. Florida Secretary of State, 974 F.3d 1236 (11th Cir. 2020), voters sued to change the process by which gubernatorial candidates were listed on voting ballots, id. at 1242. The plaintiffs only named the Florida secretary of state as a defendant. Id. The Eleventh Circuit held that the plaintiffs could not show causation because nonparty “supervisors of elections”—not the secretary of state—determined the ballot order. Id. at 1253. But critical to the court’s ruling was the fact that the supervisors were “independent officials under Florida law who [were] not subject to the [s]ecretary’s control.” Id. Instead, they were “constitutional officers who [were] elected at the county level by the people of Florida.” Id. Suing the secretary was therefore futile because she exercised no executive, statutory, or other authority over the supervisors’ actions. Here, however, Defendants do not argue that OMB is powerless to dictate executive policy, nor could they (indeed, they try to argue the exact opposite). See 31 U.S.C. § 503 (establishing that OMB “[p]rovides overall direction and leadership to the executive branch on financial management matters by establishing financial management policies and requirements”); ECF No. 21-1, at 16-20. Unlike the secretary in Jacobson, OMB can exert some influence on federal spending policy (even though Plaintiffs dispute the extend of that authority). Its actions therefore give rise to causation in this case.

The record also supports Plaintiffs’ allegations of causation. On January 30, after this court’s administrative stay and OMB’s purported “rescission” of M-25-13, the Environmental Protection Agency responded to a nonprofit’s funding inquiry by saying that it was still “working diligently to implement [OMB]’s memorandum, Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs.” ECF No. 24-1, at 7. The EPA further explained that it was “temporarily pausing all activities related to the obligation or disbursement of EPA Federal financial assistance at this time” and was “continuing to work with OMB” to do so. Id. The EPA’s statement that it was freezing funds in order to “implement” memorandum M-25-13 contradicts Defendants’ claim that continued pauses are only attributable to independent agency action. At oral argument, Defendants represented that as soon as they learned of EPA’s continued pause, they contacted the agency to correct any misunderstandings. Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). In this early posture, however, and pending further factual development by the parties, the court relies on Plaintiffs’ post-rescission declarations to conclude that Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged causation.

c. Redressability

Causation and redressability are closely related. While the former “focus[es] on whether a particular party is appropriate[,] redressability [considers] whether the forum is.” Bentsen, 94 F.3d at 664. In short, a plaintiff must demonstrate that the relief sought, if granted, “will likely alleviate the particularized injury alleged.” Id. at 663-64. Plaintiffs argue that blocking Defendants from doing anything to implement the substance of memorandum M-25-13 would remedy their harms. ECF No. 24, at 17-18.

Defendants respond by saying that blocking memorandum M-25-13 “would not prevent non-defendant agencies from exercising their own independent authorities to determine whether . . . a pause is warranted.” ECF No. 21-1, at 11. But, as discussed above, there is at least some evidence that agencies are pausing disbursements because of memorandum M-25-13. See supra Part II.A.1.b.

Prior to the issuance of memorandum M-25-13, Plaintiffs’ members reportedly never had problems drawing down funds or receiving financial assistance. ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶ 8; 24-5 ¶ 10. That all changed beginning January 28, immediately after OMB issued memorandum M-25-13. Streams of funds that had steadily flowed for years without issue suddenly ran dry. If the court were to grant Plaintiffs’ requested relief, Defendants would be barred from instructing all federal agencies across the board to temporarily pause (or continue pausing) financial assistance on the basis of the memorandum or its substance.4 In other words, agencies would need to behave as if the memorandum were never issued. Defendants act as if any continued freeze is merely a random coincidence that could not possibly have anything to do with their memorandum. In the court’s view, that explanation ignores both logic and fact. Plaintiffs have adequately shown that a ruling in their favor will alleviate their alleged injuries.

2. Mootness

Mootness concerns whether there is still a live controversy for the court to adjudicate. Courts often describe mootness as “the doctrine of standing set in a time frame.” U.S. Parole Comm’n v. Geraghty, 445 U.S. 388, 397 (1980) (quoting Henry P. Monaghan, Constitutional Adjudication: The Who and When, 82 Yale L.J. 1363, 1384 (1973)). Defendants characterize Plaintiffs’ complaint as only challenging OMB memorandum M-25-13. ECF No. 21-1, at 6. Therefore, in Defendants’ view, OMB’s post-complaint rescission of that memorandum eliminated the lawsuit’s only basis and mooted Plaintiffs’ claims. Id. This fails for several reasons.

First, it is blackletter law that a defendant’s “voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not deprive a federal court of its power to determine [its] legality.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Env’t Servs. (TOC), Inc., 528 U.S. 167, 189 (2000) (quoting City of Mesquite v. Aladdin’s Castle, Inc., 455 U.S. 283, 289 (1982)). If voluntary cessation automatically mooted every case, a defendant would be “free to return to [its] old ways” as soon as the case was dismissed. Id. (quoting City of Mesquite, 455 U.S. at 289). Voluntary cessation can only deprive the court of jurisdiction if it is “absolutely clear [that] the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.” Pub. Citizen, Inc. v. Fed. Energy Reg. Comm’n, 92 F.4th 1124, 1128 (D.C. Cir. 2024) (emphasis added) (quoting Friends of the Earth, Inc., 528 U.S. at 189). This is a “heavy burden” for the party asserting mootness. Id.

Here, Defendants claim that they have ended any allegedly unlawful activity by retracting memorandum M-25-13. Even taking the rescission at face value, however, Defendants have not convincingly shown that they will refrain from “resum[ing] the challenged activity” in the future. Pub. Citizen, Inc., 92 F.4th at 1128. As evidenced by the White House Press Secretary’s statements, OMB and the various agencies it communicates with appear committed to restricting federal funding. If Defendants retracted the memorandum in name only while continuing to execute its directives, it is far from “absolutely clear” that the conduct is gone for good. There is nothing stopping OMB from rewording, repackaging, or reissuing the substance of memorandum M-25-13 if the court were to dismiss this lawsuit.

The voluntary cessation doctrine is especially important in cases where the defendant is suspected of “manipulating the judicial process through the false pretense of singlehandedly ending a dispute.” Pub. Citizen, Inc., 92 F.4th at 1128 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, 920 F.3d 1, 15 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (per curiam)). Plaintiffs accuse Defendants of doing exactly that here. ECF No. 24, at 19-20.

Defendants understandably dispute this accusation. They protest that such a conclusion “would be contrary to the presumption of good faith that courts routinely accord the government when assessing voluntary cessation.” ECF No. 26, at 8 (citing Am. Cargo Transp., Inc. v. United States, 625 F.3d 1176, 1180 (9th Cir. 2010)). Defendants are correct that courts of this circuit generally hesitate “to impute such manipulative conduct to a coordinate branch of government.” Pub. Citizen, Inc., 92 F.4th at 1128-29 (quoting Clarke v. United States, 915 F.2d 699, 705 (D.C. Cir. 1990) (en banc)). But this reluctance does not apply when the government defendant deliberately acts “in order to avoid litigation.” Alaska v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 17 F.4th 1224, 1229 (D.C. Cir. 2021) (quoting Am. Bar Ass’n v. Fed. Trade Comm’n, 636 F.3d 641, 648 (D.C. Cir. 2011)). Here, Defendants’ plea for a presumption of good faith rings hollow when their own actions contradict their representations.

Within hours of OMB’s rescission, White House Press Secretary Leavitt announced that the rescission was to have no tangible effect on “the federal funding freeze.” Leavitt, X (formerly Twitter) (Jan. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/99C4-5V6G. Moreover, she explained that the primary purpose of the rescission was “[t]o end any confusion created by the court’s injunction.” Id. That statement unambiguously reflects that the rescission was in direct response to this court’s issuance of an administrative stay on January 28.5 For Defendants to innocently claim that OMB’s post-stay actions were merely a noble attempt to “end[] confusion,” ECF No. 26, at 8, strains credulity. By rescinding the memorandum that announced the freeze, but “NOT . . . the federal funding freeze” itself, id., it appears that OMB sought to overcome a judicially imposed obstacle without actually ceasing the challenged conduct. The court can think of few things more disingenuous. Preventing a defendant from evading judicial review under such false pretenses is precisely why the voluntary cessation doctrine exists. The rescission, if it can be called that, appears to be nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to prevent this court from granting relief.

Second, even if voluntary cessation did not apply, the facts on the ground indicate that this case is anything but moot. Even aside from the Press Secretary’s seeming admission that the pause will continue as planned, Plaintiffs have presented evidence that fund recipients continue to be deprived of critical loans, grants, and other resources. For example, the chief executive officer of a community health center stated that he was unable to access critical funds awarded under an H80 grant (authorized by the Public Health Service Act) starting on January 28. ECF No. 24-4 ¶ 10. After this court entered its administrative stay that afternoon, he was still unable to access funds the next day. Id. ¶ 11. And after OMB rescinded memorandum M-25-13 on January 29, he was still blocked from accessing grant funds as recently as January 31. Id. ¶ 12. Similarly, members of a tribal organization who were unable to draw down grant funds starting on January 28 had still not received any funds as recently as January 31. ECF No. 24-5 ¶ 24. And low-income parents who rely on federal grants to enable their children to attend childcare still had not received their subsidies as recently as January 31. ECF No. 24-11 ¶ 19; see, e.g., ECF Nos. 24-6, 24-7, 24-8, 24-9. Each of these examples indicates that the funding pause remains in effect—at least for some recipients—despite OMB’s rescission of memorandum M-25-13. Defendants cannot persuasively argue that the rescission of memorandum M-25-13 moots the case if the effects and directives of that memorandum continue to remain in full force. Destroying the paper trail of allegedly illegal activity means nothing if the activity persists.

In a last-ditch effort to toss the case on mootness grounds, Defendants argue that even if aspects of the funding freeze remain in effect, they persist independent of memorandum M-25-13 and thus must be challenged in a different lawsuit. ECF No. 26, at 9. In their view, just because some money is not “going out the door” does not necessarily mean that it is due to OMB’s action. Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). To the extent that funds still remain paused in spite of this court’s administrative stay or the memorandum’s rescission, Defendants argue that those pauses are the result of independent agency discretion or the President’s executive orders.

This is essentially a slightly repackaged version of Defendants’ causation argument: with the memorandum now rescinded, any lingering pauses in funding are not fairly traceable to the memorandum itself. Insofar as this lawsuit challenges the memorandum, Defendants argue that that avenue to relief is now closed. But, as explained above, supra Part II.A.1.b. & n.4, the court is not persuaded that the continuing freezes are solely due to independent agency action. Both logic and record evidence point to the opposite conclusion. As Plaintiffs’ counsel noted at oral argument, it is unclear whether twenty-four hours is sufficient time for an agency to independently review a single grant, let alone hundreds of thousands of them. Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025).

With respect to the executive orders, which the parties discussed at length during oral argument, the court remains unconvinced. Defendants’ counsel cited provisions of the executive orders referenced in M-25-13 that purportedly required temporary pauses in funding. Id. It is true that at least some of the executive orders contain language that could be construed as requiring fund pauses (albeit on much more drawn out timelines than memorandum M-25-13). See Exec. Order No. 14,151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, 90 Fed. Reg. 8339 (Jan. 20, 2025) (requiring all federal agencies to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, . . . ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts” within sixty days); Exec. Order No. 14,162, Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements, 90 Fed. Reg. 8455 (Jan. 20, 2025) (directing the United States Ambassador to the United Nations to “immediately cease or revoke any purported financial commitment made by the United States under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change”). But Plaintiffs have provided evidence that the scope of frozen funds appears to extend far beyond the reach of the executive orders, thus undermining Defendants’ claims.

As just one example, a health center that provides medical, dental, and behavioral health services to a rural community was denied access to grant funds. See ECF No. 24-4. None of the seven executive orders listed in memorandum M-25-13 would seem to cover such activity. See, e.g., Exec. Order No. 14,159, Protecting the American People Against Invasion, 90 Fed. Reg. 8443 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing illegal immigration); Exec. Order No. 14,169, Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid, 90 Fed. Reg. 8619 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing foreign aid); Exec. Order No. 14,162, Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements, 90 Fed. Reg. 8455 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing international environmental agreements); Exec. Order No. 14,154, Unleashing American Energy, 90 Fed. Reg. 8353 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing energy industry and regulations); Exec. Order No. 14,151, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing, 90 Fed. Reg. 8339 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs); Exec. Order No. 14,168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, 90 Fed. Reg. 8615 (Jan. 20, 2025) (addressing “gender ideology”); Exec. Order No. 14,182, Enforcing the Hyde Amendment, 90 Fed. Reg. 8751 (Jan. 24, 2025) (addressing federal funding of abortion). At oral argument, when asked about another declarant who was receiving a grant from the National Science Foundation, see ECF No. 24-7, Defendants could not give a clear answer as to why that recipient would be denied funds pursuant to the executive orders, Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). In sum, the court agrees with Plaintiffs that rescinding memorandum M-25-13 did not moot the case.

* * *

For these reasons, the court concludes that it has jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ complaint.

[admin]

Part 2 of 2

B. Temporary Restraining Order

A temporary restraining order is an extraordinary remedy meant to prevent serious and imminent harm in dire circumstances. To obtain one, “the moving party must show (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, (2) that it would suffer irreparable injury if the injunction were not granted, (3) that an injunction would not substantially injure other interested parties, and (4) that the public interest would be furthered by the injunction.” Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches v. England, 454 F.3d 290, 297 (D.C. Cir. 2006).

These four considerations are factors, not elements. “A district court must ‘balance the strengths of the requesting party’s arguments in each of the four required areas.’” Id. (quoting CityFed Fin. Corp. v. Off. of Thrift Supervision, 58 F.3d 738, 747 (D.C. Cir. 1995)). When a government entity is a party to the case, the third and fourth factors merge. Pursuing Am.’s Greatness v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 831 F.3d 500, 511 (D.C. Cir. 2016).

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7 (2008), courts in this circuit tended to employ a “sliding scale” method in which “a strong showing on one factor could make up for a weaker showing on another.” Sherley v. Sebelius, 644 F.3d 388, 392 (D.C. Cir. 2011). While the D.C. Circuit has considered abandoning the sliding-scale method for one that treats the substantial likelihood prong as “an independent, free-standing requirement,” id. at 393, it has yet to decide one way or the other, see Changji Esquel Textile Co. v. Raimondo, 40 F.4th 716, 726 (D.C. Cir. 2022). At the very least, however, the plaintiff must present a “serious legal question on the merits.” Raimondo, 40 F.4th at 726 (quoting Sherley, 644 F.3d at 398). Given the ambiguity with respect to the sliding-scale approach, the court will consider all factors and only delve into their relevant weight if it would affect the outcome. See Costa v. Bazron, 456 F. Supp. 3d 126, 133 (D.D.C. 2020).

1. Likelihood of Success on the Merits

The parties break this factor into several subcomponents, but the court only needs to address two at this stage. First, they dispute whether memorandum M-25-13 is final agency action subject to judicial review. If it is not, then Plaintiffs’ APA claims cannot proceed. Second, they debate the merits of Plaintiffs’ three separate claims. While the parties discussed all three claims in their briefs and at oral argument, the court only needs to find that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on one in order for this factor to weigh in favor of a TRO.6 See Media Matters for Am. v. Paxton, 732 F. Supp. 3d 1, 27 (D.D.C.), appeal filed, No. 24-7059 (D.C. Cir. 2024). The court will therefore focus on Plaintiffs’ assertion that OMB’s actions were arbitrary and capricious.

a. Final agency action

The APA only permits judicial review of “final agency action,” 5 U.S.C. § 704, which is action that “mark[s] the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking process” and determines “rights or obligations . . . from which legal consequences will flow,” Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 177-78 (1997) (first quoting Chicago & S. Air Lines, Inc. v. Waterman S.S. Corp., 333 U.S. 103, 113 (1948), then quoting Port of Boston Marine Terminal Ass’n v. Rederiaktiebolaget Transatlantic, 400 U.S. 62, 71 (1970)). The APA does not allow a court to review an agency’s “day-to-day operations.” Lujan, 497 U.S. at 899.

Defendants argue that the memorandum simply told agencies to conduct their own review of financial disbursements and thus “did not determine legal consequences.” 7 ECF No. 26, at 12. This characterization, however, is in tension with the language of the memorandum and the facts on the ground. Defendants’ assertion that the memorandum “did not itself determine which funds or grants should be paused” is true, but not in a way that helps them. Memorandum M-25-13 did not specify certain funds to be frozen; it froze all of them. Rather than give the agencies full control over what to freeze and what to leave undisturbed, Defendants mandated that all “Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to [the] obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.” OMB Pause Memorandum, at 2 (second emphasis added). That is not merely a guidance. It is a directive that immediately produced legal consequences across the entire federal funding system.

Defendants’ cited cases do not help them. In Fund for Animals, Inc. v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 460 F.3d 13 (D.C. Cir. 2006), for example, an agency’s strategy to justify a larger budget was not final agency action because it “d[id] not command anyone to do anything or to refrain from doing anything,” id. at 22 (quoting Ohio Forestry Ass’n, Inc. v. Sierra Club, 523 U.S. 726, 733 (1998)). Memorandum M-25-13, however, commanded agencies to pause all funding obligations within twenty-four hours. In Village of Bensenville v. Federal Aviation Administration, 457 F.3d 52 (D.C. Cir. 2006), an agency’s letter of intent proposing a reimbursement schedule was not final agency action because the reimbursement recipient still needed to file additional documents before the money could be disbursed, id. at 69. Here, Plaintiffs have alleged that open awards—ones that have already been approved and partially disbursed—were shut down in response to M-25-13. And in Center for Auto Safety v. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 452 F.3d 798 (D.C. Cir. 2006), an agency’s policy guideline was not final agency action because it “[did] not command[], require[], order[], or dictate[]” anything, id. at 809. It simply made general recommendations that manufacturers could choose to follow. Id. The agency’s own officials were not even bound to the letter of the recommendation; they “remained free to exercise discretion” in any tasks implicated by the guideline. Id. M-25-13, in contrast, did not merely suggest that agencies temporarily suspend grants; it announced that agencies “must” do so.

A true “guidance” might have advised federal agencies to conduct independent reviews and pause funds as necessary. But M-25-13 did not condition any such pause in this way. It said that all federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to [the] obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance” while such review was still ongoing. OMB Pause Memorandum, at 2 (second emphasis added). By any measure, Defendants’ action led to legal consequences and constituted final agency action.

b. Whether OMB’s actions were arbitrary and capricious

Under the APA, a court must “hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions” that are “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). “The scope of review under the ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard is narrow and a court is not to substitute its judgment for that of the agency.” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n of the U.S., Inc. v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 43 (1983). To pass muster, the agency “must examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action, including ‘a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.’” Id. (quoting Burlington Truck Lines v. United States, 371 U.S. 156, 168 (1962)). Agency action is generally deemed unlawful if it “has relied on factors which Congress has not intended it to consider, entirely failed to consider an important aspect of the problem, offered an explanation for its decision that runs counter to the evidence before the agency, or is so implausible that it could not be ascribed to a difference in view or the product of agency expertise.” Id.

Plaintiffs allege that OMB’s funding freeze lacked any reasonable basis and failed to consider the disastrous effects it would have. ECF No. 1 ¶¶ 43-48. Defendants, meanwhile, insist that “there is nothing irrational about a temporary pause in funding” when it is done “to ensure compliance with the President’s priorities.” ECF No. 21-1, at 22. But furthering the President’s wishes cannot be a blank check for OMB to do as it pleases. The APA requires a rational connection between the facts, the agency’s rationale, and the ultimate decision. Defendants have offered no rational explanation for why they needed to freeze all federal financial assistance—with less than twenty-four-hours’ notice—to “safeguard valuable taxpayer resources.” OMB Pause Memorandum, at 1. If Defendants intend to conduct an exhaustive review of what programs should or should not be funded, such a review could be conducted without depriving millions of Americans access to vital resources. As Defendants themselves admit, the memorandum implicated as much as $3 trillion in financial assistance. That is a breathtakingly large sum of money to suspend practically overnight. Rather than taking a measured approach to identify purportedly wasteful spending, Defendants cut the fuel supply to a vast, complicated, nationwide machine—seemingly without any consideration for the consequences of that decision. To say that OMB “failed to consider an important aspect of the problem” would be putting it mildly.

Defendants also ignored significant reliance interests in deciding to freeze federal funds on such a massive scale. While “unidentified and unproven reliance interests are not a valid basis on which to undo agency action,” Solenex LLC v. Bernhardt, 962 F.3d 520, 529 (D.C. Cir. 2020) (emphasis added), Plaintiffs have marshalled considerable evidence showing that countless organizations depend on continued disbursements to continue functioning at all. For at least some of Plaintiffs’ members, having federal funds arrive on time and as scheduled is vital.8 See ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶¶ 4, 6 (explaining that federal grants cover roughly 30% of the organization’s payroll and that disbursements are ordinarily so consistent that funds are paid to employees within a week of receipt); 24-5 ¶ 13 (explaining that a tribal organization relied so heavily on consistent disbursements that it was forced to lay off two employees as soon as the pause began on January 28). Unlike the district court in Solenex, the court here makes no assumptions about reliance interests. Those interests, as illustrated through Plaintiffs’ declarations, are all too real.

In addition, Defendants’ actions appear to suffer from infirmities of a constitutional magnitude. The appropriation of the government’s resources is reserved for Congress, not the Executive Branch. And a wealth of legal authority supports this fundamental separation of powers. The legislature’s “power of the purse is the ultimate check on the . . . power of the Executive.” U.S. House of Representatives v. Burwell, 130 F. Supp. 3d 53, 76 (D.D.C. 2015). The Appropriations Clause of the Constitution gives Congress “exclusive power” over federal spending. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy v. Fed. Lab. Rels. Auth., 665 F.3d 1339, 1346 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (quoting Rochester Pure Waters Dist. v. EPA, 960 F.2d 180, 185 (D.C. Cir. 1992)). Without it, “the executive would possess an unbounded power over the public purse of the nation[] and might apply all its monied resources at his pleasure.” Id. at 1347 (quoting 3 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 1342, at 213-14 (1833)). Indeed, the Clause “was intended as a restriction upon the disbursing authority of the Executive [Branch].” Cincinnati Soap Co. v. United States, 301 U.S. 308, 321 (1937).

Congress has exercised its plenary power to give meaning to the Appropriations Clause and “reinforce [its] control over appropriated funds.” Id. In 1982, Congress enacted the “Purpose Statute,” which requires the appropriation of federal funds in accordance with “the objects for which . . . [they] were made.” 31 U.S.C. § 1301(a). Any “reappropriation and diversion of the unexpended balance of an appropriation for a purpose other than that for which [it] originally was made” is treated “as a new appropriation.” Id. § 1301(b). Related laws expressly prohibit the Executive Branch from encroaching on Congress’s appropriations power. See id. §§ 1341, 1350. Most notably, the Impoundment Act of 1974, 2 U.S.C. § 681 et seq., lays out specific procedures whenever the President wishes to suspend appropriations that have already been enacted.

Defendants’ actions in this case potentially run roughshod over a “bulwark of the Constitution” by interfering with Congress’s appropriation of federal funds. U.S. Dep’t of the Navy, 665 F.3d at 1347. OMB ordered a nationwide freeze on pre-existing financial commitments without considering any of the specifics of the individual loans, grants, or funds. It did not indicate when that freeze would end (if it was to end at all). And it attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it. If Defendants’ actions violated the separation of powers, that would certainly be arbitrary and capricious under the APA.

At this stage, Plaintiffs have shown that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their arbitrary and capricious claim.

2. Irreparable Injury

Irreparable injury is “a high standard.” England, 454 F.3d at 297. First, the injury “must be both certain and great,” “actual and not theoretical,” and “of such imminence that there is a ‘clear and present’ need for equitable relief.” Id. (quoting Wis. Gas Co. v. FERC, 758 F.2d 669, 674 (D.C. Cir. 1985) (per curiam)). Second, the injury “must be beyond remediation,” meaning that “[t]he possibility [of] adequate compensatory or other corrective relief . . . at a later date . . . weighs heavily against a claim of irreparable harm.” Id. at 297-98 (quoting Wis. Gas Co., 758 F.2d at 674). Plaintiffs easily meet their burden here.

“[O]bstacles [that] unquestionably make it more difficult for the [plaintiff] to accomplish [its] primary mission . . . provide injury for purposes . . . [of] irreparable harm.” League of Women Voters of the U.S. v. Newby, 838 F.3d 1, 9 (D.C. Cir. 2016). While ordinary economic injuries are usually insufficient, financial harm can “constitute irreparable harm . . . where the loss threatens the very existence of the movant’s business.” Wis. Gas Co., 758 F.2d at 674.

If the freeze were to remain in effect, Plaintiffs’ members will suffer “existential injuries” and some programs may “simply disappear.” ECF No. 5-1, at 12. Their workers may be unable to pay for housing or food. ECF No. 24-4 ¶ 7 (“A lot of our staff live paycheck to paycheck, and if they can’t get paid, then they are unable to pay rent or buy groceries.”). Some have already been forced to “shutter [their] programs” just to make payroll. ECF No. 24-7 ¶¶ 20-21. And patients or customers that rely on their services may be denied care when it is most needed. ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶ 16; 24-5 ¶ 21. For some, these are harms for which “there can be no do over and no redress.” Newby, 838 F.3d at 9 (quoting League of Women Voters of N.C. v. North Carolina, 769 F.3d 224, 247 (4th Cir. 2014)); see ECF No. 24-4 ¶ 7 (“[I]f my Health Center loses physicians, dentist, or nurse practitioners, then it will be virtually impossible to recruit replacements to a rural Health System that is suddenly an unreliable source of income.”).

Some of these organizations are still waiting for funds to be disbursed. ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶ 11; 24-6 ¶ 18; 24-8 ¶ 10-11. In the meantime, they’ve been forced to dismiss employees, cut essential programs, and pay workers out of their own pockets. ECF Nos. 24-4 ¶ 12; 24-5 ¶ 13; 24-7 ¶ 21; 24-8 ¶ 12. Each day that the pause continues to ripple across the country is an additional day that Americans are being denied access to programs that heal them, house them, and feed them. Because the funding freeze threatens the lifeline that keeps countless organizations operational, Plaintiffs have met their burden of showing irreparable harm.9

3. Prejudice and Public Interest

The declarations and evidence presented by Plaintiffs paint a stark picture of nationwide panic in the wake of the funding freeze. Organizations with every conceivable mission—healthcare, scientific research, emergency shelters, and more—were shut out of funding portals or denied critical resources beginning on January 28. See ECF Nos. 24-4, 24-5, 24-6, 24-7, 24-8, 24-9, 24-10, 24-11. For many, the chaos began well before 5:00 p.m. as various agencies—themselves scrambling to figure out how to comply with memorandum M-25-13—began taking their funding apparatuses offline. ECF Nos. 24-8 ¶¶ 8-9; 24-6 ¶ 15; 24-7 ¶ 13; 24-8 ¶ 9. The directors of the recipient organizations were forced to take drastic measures. Some tried desperately for hours to log into their grant accounts, while others prepared for the worst by laying off employees. Many of the organizations rely on federal funding to pay their workers, meaning that the freeze forced them to send staff home or close their doors.

The potential scope of the freeze is as great as $3 trillion and its effects are difficult to fully grasp. Plaintiffs point to news reports detailing far-reaching effects: preschools could not pay their staff; Los Angeles and North Carolina were denied disaster relief aid; and elderly Americans who relied on subsidized programs for food did not know if their next meal would come. ECF No. 24, at 41. The court concludes that the balance of the equities and public interest heavily favor granting Plaintiffs’ request.10

III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, it is hereby ORDERED that Plaintiffs’ Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order, ECF No. 5, is GRANTED. It is further

ORDERED that Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss, ECF No. 21, is DENIED. It is further

ORDERED that Defendants are enjoined from implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards; it is further

ORDERED that Defendants must provide written notice of the court’s temporary restraining order to all agencies to which OMB Memorandum M-25-13 was addressed. The written notice shall instruct those agencies that they may not take any steps to implement, give effect to, or reinstate under a different name the directives in OMB Memorandum M-25-13 with respect to the disbursement of Federal Funds under all open awards. It shall also instruct those agencies to release any disbursements on open awards that were paused due to OMB Memorandum M-25-13; it is further

ORDERED that this Order shall apply to the maximum extent provided for by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(d)(2) and 5 U.S.C. §§ 705 and 706. It is further

ORDERED that Defendants shall file a status report on or before February 7, 2025, apprising the court of the status of its compliance with this Order, including by providing a copy of the written notice described above; and it is further

ORDERED that the parties shall meet and confer and file a joint status report proposing a preliminary injunction briefing schedule on or before February 7, 2025.

SO ORDERED.

LOREN L. ALIKHAN
United States District Judge

Date: February 3, 2025

_______________

Notes:

1 The court issued the administrative stay from the bench shortly before 5:00 p.m., when the “temporary pause” of federal funding was set to take effect. Transcript of Emergency Hearing, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits v. Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Jan. 28, 2025).

2 Defendants do not contest prongs (b) or (c). See ECF No. 24, at 18 n.11.

3 Plaintiffs submitted most of these declarations alongside their reply in support of the TRO motion, ECF No. 24, and submitted an additional declaration the evening of February 2, 2025, ECF No. 27. While such declarations should normally be filed concurrently with the complaint, any delay in compiling these materials is entirely of Defendants’ own making. OMB issued memorandum M-25-13 less than twenty-four hours before it was set to take effect. Plaintiffs can hardly be blamed for needing more than a single morning and afternoon to submit critical evidence under exigent circumstances. Defendants object to one of the declarations, “Exhibit F,” ECF No. 24-6, because it came from a party that only joined one of the Plaintiff coalitions after the lawsuit was filed. Because standing “is assessed as of the time a suit commences,” Chamber of Commerce, 642 F.3d at 200, the court will not consider Exhibit F as part of its standing analysis. The court may, however, consider Exhibit F for purposes of assessing mootness because mootness asks whether post-complaint events impact the court’s jurisdiction. See Garcia v. U.S. Citizenship & Immgr. Servs., 168 F. Supp. 3d 50, 65 (D.D.C. 2016) (explaining that standing “is concerned with the presence of injury, causation, and redressability at the time a complaint is filed,” whereas mootness “scrutinizes the presence of these elements after filing—i.e., at the time of a court’s decision”).

4 Based on Plaintiffs’ representations at oral argument, this relief would only apply to open awards that have been affected by OMB’s directive. Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025).

5 The U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island had yet to enter a TRO at the time of the Press Secretary’s social media post, so the post could not have been referring to that case. See TRO, New York, No. 25-CV-39 (D.R.I. Jan. 31, 2025), ECF No. 50.

6 Although two of Plaintiffs’ claims are not critical to the court’s ruling at this juncture, the parties will have the opportunity to further develop all three claims as this case proceeds. Even so, the court notes that Plaintiffs have shown some likelihood of success—or, at the very least, “a ‘serious legal question’ on the merits,” Sherley, 644 F.3d at 398—on their remaining claims. There is substantial room for debate as to whether OMB’s authorizing statute, 31 U.S.C. § 503, permits it to order the kind of sweeping, nationwide directive that it commanded here. And while Defendants are correct that the government “is not required to subsidize First Amendment rights,” Leathers v. Medlock, 499 U.S. 439, 450 (1991), it is less clear whether it may deliberately withhold funds that have already been earmarked for certain recipients based exclusively on the recipient’s viewpoints.

7 In their briefs, Defendants only seem to challenge whether the memorandum determined “rights or obligations . . . from which legal consequences will flow,” and not whether it marked the “consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking.” See ECF No. 24, at 22.

8 The court is unpersuaded by Defendants’ assertion that reliance interests only apply to the receipt of funds but not the timing of when they are received. ECF No. 21-1, at 23. Such a claim is without legal support and defies logic. If an organization is unable to meet payroll, that could immediately prevent its employees from paying rent or affording groceries. Similarly, if a clinic is forced to shut its doors and turn away patients, that produces instant harm that cannot be remedied by a later resumption of funds.

9 At oral argument, Defendants asserted that the TRO issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island undermined Plaintiffs’ claims of irreparable harm. The government defendants in that case understood the TRO to apply to “all awards or obligations—not just those involving the Plaintiff States.” Notice of Compliance with Court’s TRO, Ex. A, New York, No. 25-CV-39 (D.R.I. Feb. 3, 2025), ECF No. 51-1, at 1. Even assuming that the Rhode Island TRO applies to Plaintiffs, that would not block this court from entering a TRO of its own. See Whitman-Walker Clinic, Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 485 F. Supp. 3d 1, 60 (D.D.C. 2020) (“[C]ourts routinely grant follow-on injunctions against the Government, even in instances when an earlier nationwide injunction has already provided plaintiffs in the later action with their desired relief.”) (collecting cases). This court has no control over the duration or scope of the District of Rhode Island’s TRO. Failing to grant a TRO here when Plaintiffs have met the requirements for one would leave them unprotected and vulnerable to further harm.

10 Defendants also request that the court convert this proceeding into one for a preliminary injunction (rather than a TRO). Oral Argument, Nat’l Council of Nonprofits, No. 25-CV-239 (D.D.C. Feb. 3, 2025). Given that this case was filed less than a week ago, concerns weighty legal issues that require careful consideration, and involves a constantly shifting factual landscape, the court declines Defendants’ request. The parties will be given an opportunity to fully brief and argue Plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction on a schedule of their choosing.

[admin]

OMB Memorandum for Heads of Executed Departments and Agencies: Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs. ]"The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars; this memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements... Nothing in this memo should be construed to impact Medicare or Social Security benefits."]
by Matthew J. Vaeth, Acting Director, Office of Management and Budget
1/27/25

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503

THE DIRECTOR

January 27, 2025

M-25-13

MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

FROM: Matthew J. Vaeth, Acting Director, Office of Management and Budget

SUBJECT: Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs

The American people elected Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States and gave him a mandate to increase the impact of every federal taxpayer dollar. In Fiscal Year 2024, of the nearly $10 trillion that the Federal Government spent, more than $3 trillion was Federal financial assistance, such as grants and loans. Career and political appointees in the Executive Branch have a duty to align Federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities. Financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing Administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing, ending “wokeness” and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again. The use of Federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.

This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance1 programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements.2 For example, during the initial days of his Administration, President Donald J. Trump issued a series of executive orders to protect the American people and safeguard valuable taxpayer resources, including Protecting the American People Against Invasion (Jan. 20, 2025), Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid (Jan. 20, 2025), Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements (Jan. 20, 2025), Unleashing American Energy (Jan. 20, 2025), Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing (Jan. 20, 2025), Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government (Jan. 20, 2025), and Enforcing the Hyde Amendment (Jan. 24, 2025). These executive orders ensure that Federal funds are used to support hardworking American families.

To implement these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their Federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders. In the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, Federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.

This temporary pause will provide the Administration time to review agency programs and determine the best uses of the funding for those programs consistent with the law and the President’s priorities. The temporary pause will become effective on January 28, 2025, at 5:00 PM. Even before completing their comprehensive analysis, Federal agencies must immediately identify any legally mandated actions or deadlines for assistance programs arising while the pause remains in effect. Federal agencies must report this information to OMB along with an analysis of the requirement. OMB also directs Federal agencies to pause all activities associated with open NOFOs, such as conducting merit review panels.

No later than February 10, 2025, agencies shall submit to OMB detailed information on any programs, projects or activities subject to this pause. Each agency must pause: (i) issuance of new awards; (ii) disbursement of Federal funds under all open awards; and (iii) other relevant agency actions that may be implicated by the executive orders, to the extent permissible by law, until OMB has reviewed and provided guidance to your agency with respect to the information submitted.

OMB may grant exceptions allowing Federal agencies to issue new awards or take other actions on a case-by-case basis. To the extent required by law, Federal agencies may continue taking certain administrative actions, such as closeout of Federal awards (2 CFR 200.344), or recording obligations expressly required by law.

Additionally, agencies must, for each Federal financial assistance program: (i) assign responsibility and oversight to a senior political appointee to ensure Federal financial assistance conforms to Administration priorities; (ii) review currently pending Federal financial assistance announcements to ensure Administration priorities are addressed, and, subject to program statutory authority, modify unpublished Federal financial assistance announcements, withdraw any announcements already published, and, to the extent permissible by law, cancel awards already awarded that are in conflict with Administration priorities, and; (iii) ensure adequate oversight of Federal financial assistance programs and initiate investigations when warranted to identify underperforming recipients, and address identified issues up to and including cancellation of awards.

_______________

Notes

1 2 CFR 200.1 defines Federal financial assistance to mean “[a]ssistance that recipients or subrecipients receive or administer” in various forms, but this term does not include assistance provided directly to individuals. For the purposes of this memorandum, Federal financial assistance includes: (i) all forms of assistance listed in paragraphs (1) and (2) of the definition of this term at 2 CFR 200.1; and (ii) assistance received or administered by recipients or subrecipients of any type except for assistance received directly by individuals.

2 Nothing in this memo should be construed to impact Medicare or Social Security benefits.

[admin]

Donald J. Trump tweets he had friendly conversation with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico; "We agreed to immediately pause anticipated tariffs for one month of negotiations."
by Donald J. Trump
2/3/25


Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

I just spoke with President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico. It was a very friendly conversation wherein she agreed to immediately supply 10,000 Mexican Soldiers on the Border separating Mexico and the United States. These soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country. We further agreed to immediately pause the anticipated tariffs for a one month period during which we will have negotiations headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and high-level Representatives of Mexico. I look forward to participating in those negotiations, with President Sheinbaum, as we attempt to achieve a “deal” between our two Countries.

Feb 03, 2025, 8:41 AM

*****************

Donald J. Trump tweets about friendly conversation with Pres. Trudeau of Canada; "Tariffs announced on Saturday will be paused for a 30 day period to see whether or not a final Economic deal with Canada can be structured."
by Donald J. Trump
2/3/25


Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

Canada has agreed to ensure we have a secure Northern Border, and to finally end the deadly scourge of drugs like Fentanyl that have been pouring into our Country, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, while destroying their families and communities all across our Country.

Canada will implement their $1.3 Billion Border plan, and as per Prime Minister Trudeau, will be, “reinforcing the Border with new choppers, technology and personnel, enhanced coordination with our American partners, and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl. Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are, and will be, working on protecting the Border. In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar, we will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the Border, launch a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl, and we will be backing it with $200 million.”

As President, it is my responsibility to ensure the safety of ALL Americans, and I am doing just that. I am very pleased with this initial outcome, and the Tariffs announced on Saturday will be paused for a 30 day period to see whether or not a final Economic deal with Canada can be structured. FAIRNESS FOR ALL!

Feb 03, 2025, 2:57 PM

[admin]

TRUMP LOST. Vote Suppression Won. Here are the numbers from investigative reporter Greg Palast...
by Greg Palast
The Hartmann Report
Jan 24, 2025
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost ... on-won-c6f

Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.

And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.

Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.

But if you’re expecting a sexy story about Elon Musk messing with vote-counting software from outer space, sorry, you won’t get that here.

As in Bush v. Gore in 2000 and in too many other miscarriages of Democracy, this election was determined by good old “vote suppression,” the polite term we use for shafting people of color out of their ballot. We used to call it Jim Crow.

Here are key numbers:

— 4,776,706 voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls according to US Elections Assistance Commission data.
— By August of 2024, for the first time since 1946, self-proclaimed “vigilante” voter-fraud hunters challenged the rights of 317,886 voters. The NAACP of Georgia estimates that by Election Day, the challenges exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.
— No fewer than 2,121,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified for minor clerical errors (e.g. postage due).
— At least 585,000 ballots cast in-precinct were also disqualified.
— 1,216,000 “provisional” ballots were rejected, not counted.
— 3.24 million new registrations were rejected or not entered on the rolls in time to vote.

If the purges, challenges and ballot rejections were random, it wouldn’t matter. It’s anything but random. For example, an audit by the State of Washington found that a Black voter was 400% more likely than a white voter to have their mail-in ballot rejected. Rejection of Black in-person votes, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study in Florida, ran 14.3% or one in seven ballots cast.

There are also the uncountable effects of the explosive growth of voter intimidation tactics including the bomb threats that closed 31 polling stations in Atlanta on Election Day.

America’s Nasty Little Secret

The nasty little secret of American democracy is that we don’t count all the votes. Nor let every citizen vote.

In 2024, especially, after an avalanche of new not-going-to-let-you-vote laws passed in almost every red state, the number of citizens Jim Crow’d out of their vote soared into the millions. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since the 2020 election, “At least 30 states enacted 78 restrictive laws” to blockade voting. The race-targeted laws ran the gamut from shuttering drop boxes in Black-majority cities to, for the first time, allowing non-government self-appointed “vote fraud vigilantes” to challenge voters by the hundreds of thousands.

Throughout election seasons, The New York Times and NPR and establishment media write stories and editorials decrying vote suppression tactics, from new ID requirements to new restrictions on mail-in voting. But, notably, the mainstream press never, ever, not once, will say that these ugly racist attacks on voters changed the outcome of an election.

Question: If these vote suppression laws—notorious example: Georgia’s SB 202—had no effect on election outcomes, then why did GOP legislators fight so hard to pass these laws? The answer is clear on the Brennan Center’s map of states that passed restrictive laws. It’s pretty much Trump’s victory map.


States that have enacted restrictive voting laws, 2021-24

America Goes Postal

Let’s look at just one vote suppression operation in action.

In 2020, during the pandemic, America went postal. More than 43% of us voted by mail.

But it wasn’t easy. Harris County, Texas, home of Houston, tried to mail out ballots during the Covid epidemic on the grounds that voters shouldn’t die waiting in lines at polling stations. But then, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton stopped this life-saving measure.

Why wouldn’t this GOP official let Houstonians vote safely? Maybe it’s because Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America. Indeed, on Steve Bannon’s podcast, Paxton proudly stated, “Had we not done that [stopped Houston from sending out ballots], Donald Trump would've lost the election” in Texas. Texas!

Before the 2024 election, prompted by Trump’s evidence-free attack on mail-in ballots as inherently fraudulent, 22 states, according to the Brennan Center, imposed “38 new restrictions on the ability to vote absentee that were not in place in 2020…likely to most affect or already have disproportionately affected voters of color.” You’re shocked, right?

Texas’ requirement to add ID numbers to an absentee ballot caused the rejection rate to jump from 1% to 12%.

So, here’s the question we need to ask. If restrictions on mail-in balloting swung Texas to Trump, how did all these new restrictions affect the outcome of the vote in other states?

In 2020, an NPR study found the mail-in ballot rejection rate hit 13.8% during the Democratic primaries—a loss of one in seven ballots.

Take Georgia, where the Palast Investigative Fund spent months in on-the-ground investigations.

Here are photos of a Georgia voter, career military officer and Pentagon advisor Major Gamaliel Turner (Ret), demonstrating for young voters how to fill out an absentee ballot, emphasizing that it must be mailed in promptly. He did, seven days before the deadline. But we only recently learned that Georgia officials disqualified his ballot as received too late.


Major Gamaliel Turner (now retired) about to mail in his absentee ballot. The state of Georgia rejected it. (Photo: Palast Investigative Fund 2024.)

In 2008, even before the majority of Democrats began voting by mail, when absentee balloting was much rarer, the federal government reported 488,136 mail-in ballots were rejected, almost all on picayune grounds (i.e. middle initial on signature missing etc.). An MIT study put the number of rejected mail-in ballots at 2.9%.

That’s the low-end of MIT’s estimate of mail-in ballots tossed out. Charles Stewart, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, author of the report, notes mail-in ballots requested and never received nor returned could raise the total mail-in ballot loss rate to 21%.

For 2024, that would total 14.1 million ballots that, effectively, vanished from the count.

The “failure to return” ballot was exacerbated in this election by the steep cut in ballot drop boxes, a method favored by urban (read, “Democratic”) voters. Black voters in Atlanta used ballot drop boxes extensively because they feared, with good reason, relying on the Post Office [see Major Turner’s story above].

In response, the Republican Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, signed SB 202 which slashed the number of drop boxes by 75% only in Black-majority counties and locked them away at night. These moves slashed mail-in and drop box balloting, used by the majority of Democrats in 2020, by nearly 90% in the 2024 race.

Even if deemed “on time,” ballots still face rejection. Marietta, Georgia, first-time voter Andrian Consonery Jr. told me his mail-in ballot was rejected because his signature supposedly didn’t match that on his registration. (I needn’t add, Consonery is Black.) In effect, Consonery was accused of forgery—a federal crime--not by the FBI but by self-appointed amateur sleuths. This challenge to mail-in ballots, part of a right-wing campaign, has gone viral.


Georgian Adrian Consonery Jr.’s mail-in ballot was challenged because of a false claim that his signature was forged. Photo: Zach D. Roberts for the Palast Investigative Fund (2024)

In 2020, the federal government reported that 157,477 ballots were rejected for supposedly “mis-matched” signatures. That’s quite a crime wave—but without criminals.

And that’s before we get to the dozens of other attacks on voting that were freshly minted for the 2024 election, attacks aimed at voters of color.

The crucial statistic is that not everyone’s ballot gets disqualified. One study done for the United States Civil Rights Commission found that a Black person, such as Maj. Turner, will be 900% more likely to have their mail-in or in-person ballot disqualified than a white voter.

Now, let’s do some arithmetic. If we take the lowest end of the MIT ballot rejection rate, and only a tenth of the “lost” ballot rate, and then apply it to the number of mail-in and drop-box ballots, we can conservatively estimate that 2,121,000 mail-in votes went into the electoral dumpster.

Whose ballots? Democrats are 51% more likely than Republicans to vote by mail; and, given the racial disparity in ballot rejections, Trump’s swing-state margins begin to look shaky.

The KKK Plan and the New Vigilantes

In 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund uncovered a whole new way to bring Jim Crow back to life: challenges to a citizen’s right to vote by a posse of self-proclaimed vote-fraud hunters.

Four years ago, the GOP took this new suppression method out for a test ride in Georgia when 88 Republican operatives—remember, these are not government officials — challenged the rights of over180,000 Georgians to have their ballots counted. These vigilantes based their scheme on the program originally used by the Ku Klux Klan in 1946.

One challenged voter: Major Turner, the same voter whose mail-in ballot was disqualified in a later election.

In 2020, the Major’s ballot was challenged by the county Chairman of the Republican Party in Southern Georgia, Alton Russell. (Russell likes to dress up as infamous vigilante Doc Holliday, with a loaded six-gun in a holster.) In a (polite) confrontation we filmed between the Major and Russell, the GOP honcho admitted he had no evidence that Maj. Turner, nor any of the 4,000 others he challenged, should be denied the right to have their ballots counted.

Note: The Palast Fund contacted a sample of 800 of these challenged voters and found that, overwhelmingly, they were Americans of color.

In 2020, this KKK plan, adopted by the Trump organization, proved its value. In that election, Trump almost won Georgia, falling short by just 11,779 votes—only because local elections officials rejected most of the challenges. But for 2024, the Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature changed the law to make it very difficult for officials to deny the challenges.

That emboldened the Trump-supported organization True the Vote to roll out the challenge to every swing state. In 2024, True the Vote signed up over 40,000 volunteer vigilantes. The organization crowed proudly that, by August of 2024, they’d already challenged a mind-blowing 317,886 voters in dozens of states. By Election Day this November, True the Vote projected it would have challenged over two million voters. In addition, Trump’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, founded Eagle AI to challenge hundreds of thousands more including in swing state Pennsylvania.

How many voters ultimately lost their ballots? Almost all voting officials we’ve contacted have refused to answer.

Placebo Ballots

Those voters who’d been challenged but mailed in their ballot would be unlikely to know their vote had been lost. Others who showed up in person at a poll would be told they could not vote on a regular ballot. These voters were sent away or forced to vote on a “provisional” ballot.

If you’ve been challenged or find you’ve been purged off the registration rolls, you’ll be offered one of these provisional ballots, paper ballots you place in a special envelope. Typically, you’ll be promised your registration will be checked and then your ballot will be counted. Bullshit. If you’re challenged, unless you personally contact or go into your county clerk’s office with ID and proof of address, your ballot goes into the electoral dumpster.

A better name for a “provisional” ballot would be “placebo” ballot. You think you’ve voted, but chances are, you did not, that is, your ballot wasn’t counted.

Here's an ugly number: According to the US Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), in 2016, when 2.5 million provisional ballots were cast, a breathtaking 42.3% were never counted.

Think about that. Over a million Americans lost their vote — though, notably, not one was charged with attempting to vote illegally. And that was in 2016, before the vigilante challenges and before millions more had been purged from the rolls leading up to the 2024 election.

And here’s the statistic that matters most. Black, Hispanic or Asian-America voters are 300% more likely than white voters to be shunted to a “placebo” provisional ballot.

The Great Purge and the Poison Postcard

The polite term in government agencies is, “List Maintenance.” It’s best known as The Purge—when voters’ registrations are wiped off the rolls. The EAC keeps track of The Purge. It’s a big business. For example, before the 2022 election, when the data was last available, swing state North Carolina wiped 392,851 voters off the rolls.

The majority of removals were based on questionable, indeed, shockingly faulty information that a voter had moved their residence. I’m not talking about the 4.9 million voters purged because they’re dead, or eight million others whose residential move could be verified, nor those serving time in prison nor those ruled too crazy to vote.

I’m talking about a trick that has been perfected by politicians of both parties to eliminate voters of the wrong persuasion: the Poison Postcard. Here’s how it works: Targeted voters are mailed postcards by state elections officials. (Let’s remember, state voting chiefs, “Secretaries of State,” are almost to a one partisan hacks.) Voters who don’t sign and return the cards, which look like junk mail, will be purged.

The Poison Postcard response rate is close to nothing. In Arizona, according to the EAC, just one in ten postcards are returned. And in Georgia, the vote-saving response is barely above 1%. And that’s the way our partisan voting officials like it.

Were the millions of Americans purged before the 2024 election all fraudsters who should lose their right to vote? Direct marketing expert Mark Swedlund told us, “This only means that most people, especially young people, the poor and voters of color, simply ignore junk mail.”

With the help of Swedlund and the same experts used by Amazon—and believe me, Amazon knows exactly where you live--we took a deep dive into two states’ purge operations for the ACLU.

The state of Georgia had purged hundreds of thousands from the voter rolls on grounds they’d moved from their voting addresses. Our experts, going name by name through Georgia’s purge list, working from special data provided us by the US Postal Service, identified 198,351 Georgians who had been purged for moving had, in fact, not moved an inch from their legal voting address. The state’s only evidence these 198,351 voters had moved? They failed to return the Poison Postcard.


Georgia Voter Roll Purge Errors, by Greg Palast, Sept 1, 2020

In 2020, I testified in federal court for the NAACP and RainbowPUSH, presenting our expert findings to get those voters, overweighted with minorities and young Georgians, back on the rolls. Unfortunately, the Trump’d-up court system now gives huge deference to a state’s voting operations, a trend which first took off in 2013 when the US Supreme Court defenestrated the Voting Rights Act.

The results have been devastating. According to the EAC data, before the 2024 election, 4,776,706 registrants were removed nationwide simply because they failed to return the postcard.

Also in 2020, the Palast Investigative Fund produced a technical report for Black Voters Matter Fund on a proposed purge of 153,779 voters in Wisconsin, a plan pushed by Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a group financed by right-wing billionaires. For Black Voters Matter, we brought back our team of location experts who proved, name by name, that the proposed purge was wildly riddled with errors.

Notably, we found that the purged was aimed almost exclusively at African-Americans in Milwaukee and at students in Madison. The non-partisan Elections Board agreed with us, allowing those voters to cast ballots, with the result that Biden squeaked by Trump in Wisconsin by 20,682 votes. (Note: It was not our intention to elect Biden, but to allow the voters, not some Purge’n General, to pick our President.)

Unfortunately, before the 2024 election, the Poison Postcard Purge accelerated. This time, a new Elections Board in Wisconsin (10 electoral votes) decided to use the same discredited purge list to knock off 166,433 voters which, this time, we could not stop. Kamala Harris lost that state by just 29,397 votes. In Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), the Poison Postcards wiped out 360,132 voters, three times Trump’s victory margin.

And before the vote this year, Georgia ramped up the purge, targeting an astonishing 875,000 voters, earning it the #1 ranking for “election integrity” by the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation.

I saw the purge in action in Savannah, Georgia, this October, where 900 Savannah voters, most of them Black, were challenged by one single “vigilante,” according to voting expert Carry Smith. Smith, who wrote her doctoral thesis on wrongful purges in Georgia, was herself on the hit list.

And more

We haven’t even touched on other ways that voters of color, college students and urban voters have come under attack. These include the rejection of new registrations and rejection of in-person votes as “spoiled” (i.e. rejected as unreadable), costing, according to the EAC, more than a million votes—rejections which our 25 years of investigations have found are way overweighted against the Democratic demographic.

After the 2012 election, I was able to calculate, with cold certainty, that 2,383,587 new voters had their registrations rejected; 488,136 legitimate absentee ballots were disqualified, and so on. In that election, a total of 5,901,814 citizens were blocked from voting or had their ballots disqualified. These stats were based on the hard data from the EAC which gathers detailed reports from the states.

Today, with new, sophisticated, and well-financed vote suppression operations, the number of voters purged and ballots disqualified are clearly far higher than the suppression count of 2012. Unfortunately, the EAC won’t release data, if it does at all, for at least a year. We’ve put in Open Records requests to the states, but today’s officials are stonewalling and slow-walking our requests for the data.

In no other democracy are the vote totals—or, to be clear, the uncounted ballot totals—a state secret.

America deserves an answer to this question: Excluding a boost from Jim Crow vote suppression games, did Donald Trump win?

From the shockingly huge numbers we’ve discussed here of provisional and mail-in ballots disqualified, the postcard purge operation, the vigilante challenges and so on, we can say, with reasonable certainty, Trump lost—that is, would have lost both the Electoral College and popular vote totals absent suppression.

By how much?

For those who can’t sleep without my best estimate, let me apply the most conservative methodology possible, as I would do in a government investigation.

I’ve updated the 2012 suppression numbers with the newest available data. Not surprisingly, the suppression number has soared, in part because the number of voters has increased by 41.3 million since 2012. But principally, the votes “lost” also zoomed upward because of the massive increase in mail-in balloting by Democrats since 2012, and crucially, the effect of new Jim Crow voting restrictions. Given a minimum two-to-one racial and partisan disparity in voters purged and ballots disqualified, the 2024 “suppression factor” is no less than 4.596% of the total vote.

Those familiar with data mining will note that there is some double-counting in the 9 million voters and their ballots disqualified that I cited at the top of the article. In addition, we must recognize that many voters caught up in the purges and challenges would have cast their ballot for Trump. Therefore, I’ve conservatively cut in half the low end of the range of the calculation of votes suppressed to 2.3% to isolate the effect on Trump’s official victory margin.

In other words, vote suppression cost Kamala Harris no fewer than 3,565,000 votes. Harris would have topped Trump’s official total by 1.2 million. Most important, this 2.3% suppression factor undoubtedly cost Harris the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. If not for the wholesale attack on votes and voters, Harris would have won the election with 286 Electoral votes.

Tech note from a numbers guy—and Martin Luther King

Until the Elections Assistance Commission gets updated figures from the states next year (and, under Trump, I doubt we will ever get those numbers), 3,565,000 votes lost to Harris is the estimate I would present in my role as a forensic expert in a courtroom as the lowest conceivable suppression factor.

I rarely make a big deal about my own credentials but, since the election, the Web has been flooded by amateur, arithmetic-defying speculation about computer hacking and other unsupported twaddle. Best to stick to hard, verifiable data. And that’s what I do.

For two decades, I was a forensic economist for government agencies including the US Justice Department; taught statistics at Indiana University; provided expert calculations of vote suppression for the ACLU, NAACP, and RainbowPUSH, and won the Global Editors Award for my data journalism on vote suppression measurements for reports done for Al Jazeera, BBC, Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The numbers you get here are exactly what I’d present to a Federal court. In other words, kids, don’t do this at home…calculating the “un-count” requires expertise.

I make this point for another reason: The theory that “Elon Musk messed with the voting machines” is, unconsciously, unintentionally racist. With few exceptions, these silly speculations come from those who simply ignore not just the millions of votes officially reported as suppressed, their theories also ignore the horrifically painful experience of Black people turned away from the polls.

Here is a photo of Jessica Lawrence in tears, moments after her 92-year-old grandmother was tossed out of an Atlanta polling station, into a storm, because she’d been wrongfully purged. Any speculation about the nefarious cause of Trump’s win must not leave out Jessica’s grandma nor the millions of other citizens of color who were wrongly barred from their ballot.


Jessica Lawrence at Atlanta polling station just after her 92-year-old grandmother was denied a ballot. Photo: David Ambrose for the Palast Investigative Fund ©2018. [See Ms. Jordan and Maj. Turner in the film, Vigilantes Inc: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, available without charge on YouTube.]

Now here’s the good news.

We saw that in 2020 when, despite extreme, even felonious actions by Trump supporters to block, challenge and disqualify voters and ballots, the theft by suppression was defeated.

That was the work of voting rights groups challenging these attacks. The work was done in the courts and, more important, in the precincts, re-registering the purged, challenging the challenges, “curing” disqualified ballots.

The road is long but victory is certain. After the 2016 election, the Palast team uncovered a cruel, racist purge program called, “Interstate Crosscheck” that cost nearly a million voters, overwhelmingly minorities, their rights. This motivated the Rev. Jesse Jackson to launch a campaign that successfully shut down Crosscheck. Unquestionably, Joe Biden could not have won in 2020 without the Reverend saving literally hundreds of thousands of votes. The point is, they can’t suppress all the votes all the time.

In other words, Democracy can win, despite the 2.3% suppression headwind.

And that’s our job as Americans: to end the purges, the vigilante challenges, the ballot rejections and the attitude that this is all somehow OK.

Martin Luther King gave us our marching orders in 1965, in words just as important today.

“Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena. I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now.”

Forensic economist and data journalist Palast covered vote suppression for The Guardian, BBC Television and Rolling Stone. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers on the topic including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.