Today’s notice: DOGE’s “thanks, Obama” moment. Tom Cole thinks Democrats won’t shut the government down. A GOP “No!” to Trump’s Gaza idea. But first: disorder in the court.
Trump vs. ‘The Biggest Law Firm in the Country’
The number of legal challenges to White House executive actions is mounting, leading some to wonder if the sheer scale of the effort to expand the president’s power will overwhelm the court system’s ability to check it.
Two separate federal courts have ruled that Donald Trump’s administration must restore funding paused by the OMB memo, but we’re still hearing reports of groups being unable to access their authorized funds. This includes some Head Start groups, which were directly exempted from the freeze before it was blocked by the courts. (A senior administration official told NOTUS that money is flowing, but has been delayed in some cases by a technical problem that predates the freeze.)
Peter Neronha, the attorney general of Rhode Island, was the lead office on winning a restraining order on the freeze as part of the 23 Democratic attorneys general who have worked together to take the White House to court several times so far. His office is looking into reports of still frozen funds.
“Is the failure to turn the money back on a function of the federal government being this enormous engine that just takes time, once it’s been shut off, to come back on?” he said. “Or is it a deliberate and intentional rejection or failure to follow the court’s order?”
If he finds evidence of the latter, which would be striking, Neronha said he’d ask a federal judge to find the Trump administration in contempt. Which would be yet another legal fight, and yet another moment where the separation of powers would be tested under this president.
“Collectively, we’re the biggest law firm in the country,” Neronha said of the assembled AG teams. “So we’re not going to have any trouble with capacity here.”
—Evan McMorris-Santoro | Read the story.
The DOGEification of an Obama Legacy Project
Barack Obama created the U.S. Digital Service in 2014 to prevent and avoid tech meltdowns like the one that bedeviled his HealthCare.gov launch. Teams went into agencies and revamped an arcane tech infrastructure. A decade later, the bones and structure of USDS were used to create Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service.
Obama’s description of the agency’s duties — “to find solutions to management challenges that can prevent progress in IT delivery” — is nearly interchangeable with Trump’s executive order changing the agency’s name and outlining DOGE’s duties. But the order has opened the door for Musk to seize more power and send DOGE employees into any agency he likes, NOTUS’ Claire Heddles and Mark Alfred report.
“What has happened has been just the most obscene perversion of what the idea of USDS was supposed to be,” said one former White House official who worked with the U.S. Digital Service across multiple administrations.
Front Page
- Lawmakers Barely Know What to Make of the Administration’s Threat to Send Migrants to Foreign Prisons: El Salvador’s president said the nation would accept migrants — and even American citizens — from the U.S.
- Haitian Migrants Fear They’re Next in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown: Advocates worry the administration will cut short Temporary Protected Status for Haiti.
- The White House Keeps Pointing Out ‘Insane’ USAID Spending That Isn’t USAID: Some of the White House’s most derided examples of wasteful spending aren’t connected to the agency at all.
- JD Vance Tells Religious Groups That U.S. Foreign Aid Was Supporting Atheism: The vice president defended cuts to foreign aid in a room of religious freedom advocates who rely on those funds.
Republicans Scratch Their Heads at Trump’s Gaza Dreams
Some GOP lawmakers aren’t sure what to make of Trump’s imperialistic aspirations abroad. Here are some of the latest Republican takes from NOTUS’ Ursula Perano and Mark Alfred.
- “The impracticality of it, I think, is hard to ignore,” GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer said. “Gaza is not ours. It does belong to another country, and they seem to have control of the situation.”
- “He sees the value of beachfront property,” Sen. Mike Rounds said. “He just says, ‘I want to see peace, and what better way to do it than to develop this place, give people something to look forward to.’”
- “I don’t think we need to own it,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa said.
- “No!” Rep. Tim Burchett said.
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies are trying to find a way to put a positive spin on the president’s increasingly expansionist tendencies, NOTUS’ Haley Byrd Wilt reports. Trump’s Gaza comments were “not meant as a hostile move,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but a “generous” one. Rep. Brian Mast said Trump’s push for Greenland was simply a “national security option.”
“If there can be a better deal that’s made, that’s what we do,” he said.
Read Ursula and Mark’s story. Read Haley’s story.
Tom Cole’s Shutdown Vibe Check
Government funding runs out on March 14 and House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole told NOTUS he’s feeling the time crunch.
The deadline, he said, is “getting here faster than I would like.”
Short of approving a slate of appropriations bills between now and the deadline — which Cole didn’t rule out, saying, “You don’t give up until it’s time” — the most likely scenario will be a short-term continuing resolution. March 14 is also the day the extraordinary measures that keep the government from a default run out without a debt ceiling hike.
With all the moving pieces, Cole said topline cross-party, cross-chamber negotiations are happening “in good faith,” but complicated.
Part of the challenge, Cole said, is that Kevin McCarthy cut a deal with Joe Biden over how to handle the debt ceiling back in 2023 … but neither of those men is in power anymore: “Now we’re in a different universe.”
“I worry about where we’re at and the uncertainty too,” Cole said. “I don’t disagree with anything the president is doing — like with USAID or whatever — but that obviously causes angst on the Democratic side and creates pressure.”
The pressure in question is whether, given their animosity toward the Trump administration, Democrats play hardball with a shutdown. But Cole is more worried about “stumbling into a shutdown.”
“Institutionally, you know, they believe in government,” he said of the Democrats. “And I don’t think they would deliberately shut it down.”
But, but, but … as NOTUS’ Nuha Dolby and Tinashe Chingarande report, Democrats aren’t ruling it out either.
—Riley Rogerson | Read Nuha and Tinashe’s story.
Not Us
We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by… not us.
- Trump Advisers Stopped Musk From Hiring a Noncitizen at DOGE by Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer at The Atlantic
- DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA by Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox at 404 Media
- The Coming War on Dissent by Jack Crosbie at The New Republic
Be Social
???
Still have no idea what they need. pic.twitter.com/JYVWI1a2ix
— Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) February 5, 2025
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