Science and Freedom Alliance - SAFA

@safa-science.bsky.social

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An organization of scientists and allies, incl @ NIH NSF affected by the Great Science Collapse of 2025. We work to chart a new course for vibrant US science and academia, backed by democracy and supported by the public. www.scienceandfreedomalliance.org

What is the typical search and selection process for IC Directors? For at least three decades, a rigorous and thorough search process has been largely successful in recruiting talented Directors whose service has maintained the NIH as a driver of biomedical innovation and economic growth in the U.S. The NIH structured search process is modeled after leadership searches at major academic institutions across the United States. Recruiting IC Directors is challenging at the best of times. Most suitable applicants would have to be willing to accept a large pay cut and divest from board seats and investments. The NIH process is designed to actively solicit outstanding scientific and medical leaders, selecting the optimal candidate through thorough and fair processes. This approach helps ensure appropriate stewardship of NIH's public resources and preserves NIH's status as a world leader in biomedical research.
'It was my duty to speak up' | Former NIH scientist speaks out after being placed on leave
Lyin’all Assholes Extra seditious
Democrats: Stand Up this September and Shut Trump Down Democratic leaders can use budget negotiations to protect science — and democracy SCIENCE AND FREEDOM ALLIANCE SEP 01, 2025 View stats in the app 13 1 6 Approval ratings for Donald Trump are hitting new lows, as Americans push back against his increasingly fascist regime. Republicans often claim Trump's authoritarian overreach is justified by an electoral “mandate.” But with final counts showing more than half of the population (50.2%) voted for another candidate, this claim has always been dubious. As Trump’s approval sinks below 40%, the claim is downright laughable. Thus far, Congress and the courts—intended to check and balance Presidential power—have abdicated their roles, allowing Trump to run roughshod across the Constitution, infringe Americans’ freedoms, and erode the U.S. scientific enterprise. As the Supreme Court continues t
How bad is this Supreme Court, really? It is very, very bad. The Court has ruled in favor of Trump on the shadow docket in 17 straight cases. The actions of the Court this year have been described, in quotes from different parties, as "lawless," "mak[ing] a mockery of the careful work responsible district judges do," "utterly lawless," "a lawless rubber stamp for Trump's authoritarian agenda," "unerringly blessing Trump's power grabs," "facilitat[ing] [Trump's] abuses of power by expanding executive authority to new heights," "lawless," and.. (you guessed it) "lawless."
Section 143. Inspector General of the Office of Management and Budget. Establishes a new Inspector General of the Office of Management and Budget to investigate actions taken by OMB and appropriates $20 million for necessary expenses of the new Office.
Schumer in front of a whiteboard
No f*cking way. Share @SenatorSchumer Subscribe The GOP is hellbent on taking health care away. Let's break it down:
AXIOS • But the new White House memo from the Office of Management and Budget argues that GEFTA has been misconstrued or, in the words of one source, is "deficient" because it was amended nine days later, on Jan. 25, 2019. • "Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn't," a senior White House official said. Friction point: The new OMB analysis is a major departure from the administration's own guidance issued by the Council of Economic Advisers this month and the Office of Personnel Management last month. Both said furloughed workers should get automatic back pay after the shutdown.
Michael Linden @MichaelSLinden - 20h I was at OMB in 2021 when Dems controlled Congress. g .... If we had insisted on a partisan approps bill, with no negotiations, that we knew Rs couldn't support, does anyone think for a second that Rachel Bade would have blamed Republicans for the ensuing shutdown. Rachael Bade & @rachaelmbade • 20h Thing is, DEMOCRATS shut the government down. Not Republicans. Small technicality, I know. (Facts are funny things!) x.com/nicholaswu12/s... • 10. C143 © 1.4K 1hl 55K 企 Liam Donovan ~ @LPDonovan • 17h 9 .... what about a 7 week CR is partisan beyond Dems refusing to support it. be specific. 6 08 贝 Michael Linden @MichaelSLinden - 15h I can answer that easily. If the CR included provisions to prevent partisan rescissions and unilateral cuts it would be clean. Those are not provisions that would have been necessary for it to be clean in a previous time (even the last Trump admin). But they clearly are now. Linden is completely correct about the real reason Democrats can't cave, but you'll notice it has nothing to do with health care. A thousand versions of this exchange are happening across the political elite this week, and if through that process of argumentation, Democrats belatedly recognize that they need to change the basis of their demands, then the ball will be in the GOP's court. It's getting pretty
Matthew Sitman @Matthew... •3/26/22 ••• Listen, the Thomases are a team. When I was a Heritage intern as a young conservative, Ginni brought in Clarence to visit with the interns. The idea that there's some wall of separation btw their respective, uh, professional activities is willful naivety 289 L0 5.2K 28K
Support those who are speaking out, and publicize their acts of courage. More than 30 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees were put on administrative leave out of the 180 who signed an open letter of dissent expressing concern about the agency's direction and leadership. At the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), over 100 federal workers and scientists were put on administrative leave for speaking out against the administration's anti-science actions and decisions. The National Institutes of Health's (NIH) "Bethesda Declaration," was signed by almost 500 NIH workers and scientists, and almost 300 workers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) signed their names to the "Voyager Declaration." Check out the Stand Up for Science website, and the Substack of former NiH employees who have established the Science and Freedom Alliance.
Let's repeat that: the Trump administration wants to bring about the largest drop in federal support for American science since World War Il. You've got to have a real thirst to end America's superpower status to want such an ambitious cut. You've got to really want other nations to thrive. But science has been "long a key driver of the US's global pre-eminence," as Guardian journalist Robert Tait writes, and so it has to be destroyed. And the purge must be so thorough that it will take decades to recover.
September 18, 2025 Dear Senators and Representatives, We, the undersigned federal workers from across the federal government, write with urgency as Congress approaches the September 30 funding deadline. The continuing resolution (CR) you pass—or fail to pass—can determine whether Congress reasserts its constitutional powers, or allows further erosion of our democracy and harm to the public. We are the workers who respond to natural disasters, protect our food and water supply, deliver new cures, keep people healthy, and serve the American people in many other ways. This is the government of every American, and the Trump administration is destroying it. The administration has clawed back funds duly appropriated by Congress, dismantled federal agencies, and trampled on the rule of law. These are not ordinary policy disputes; they are deliberate acts of authoritarian overreach. Our three branches of government were designed to protect against such overreach. Alongside executive overreach, the Supreme Court has permitted Trump administration actions that lower court judges have declared flatly illegal. Congress must get off the sidelines and use its constitutional powers, as the Article I branch, before our republic is irreparably harmed. We call on you to pass nothing less than a fighting CR: a funding bill that not only keeps the lights on, but that also includes statutory protections to rein in executive lawlessness. The fight may lead to a shutdown. As federal workers, we will be personally affected by that, along with the public. We do not want a shutdown, but we will accept a temporary shutdown to preserve our government on behalf of the American people. Congress must use this and future budget bills to protect public goods and government services that benefit every American. Core Protections for the American People
Why is signing the letter within federal workers’ free speech rights? In short: signing the letter is an expression of free speech and protected by the First Amendment. But who knows how the administration might retaliate anyway. Federal workers have substantial free speech rights, and this administration claims to care deeply about free speech. Signers of this letter should be able to speak about this matter of public concern without worrying about retaliation. Current legal precedent is that federal workers are often protected by the First Amendment when speaking out about matters of public concern. That may seem unusual, in an era when private employers have fired employees for speaking in their personal capacity. But the Supreme Court has ruled that a public employer, like the federal government, may not muzzle its employees or penalize them for their expression to the same extent that a private employer can. Government employees speaking in their personal capacities about matters of public concern have rights — because the public’s interest is served by being informed of things that government employees know.
Protestors denounce cuts to NASA’s staff, budget and union rights Several speakers at the protest also urged Congress to pass a continuing resolution that prevents the Trump administration from impounding agency funding. September 15, 2025 06:10 PM ET NASA Budget Unions
meeting, in the hope of getting answers to these questions. Not to establish conditions for Democratic votes, just to see how uncompromising Republicans intend to be.” And the most important part: “unless grassroots Democrats get wind of their broader approach, and make a fuss, Schumer and Jeffries will continue down the road to surrender.” We must make a fuss! Now is the time to speak out for a fighting CR and make sure Democratic leadership stands up for us. Beutler has a follow-up piece later in the week. That piece is mostly about Trump, but covers the CR fight too. It leads with “It’s probably an understatement to note that Democratic leaders in Congress are badly out of step with the national Democratic electorate.” This is important. One of the reasons to be hopeful now is that engaged Democratic voters are angry and want more fight, they just need to know what’s happening and what can be done. The same thing is true for scientists and science advocates: we talk to many of them who are desperately worried but don’t know what to do — don’t know who has the power to help, and how. We agree with Beutler: Schumer and Jeffries and Democratic leadership underestimate the backlash they will see if they fail to fight for this CR.
Photo of Audi field / Washington Spirit big screen. A player talks about cancer affecting black women and needing more resrse h
Democrats have momentum to push back this time around. Beyond using the CR to obtain statutory provisions to check Trump, a government shutdown can actually be used to help Democrats make the case against Trump. A shutdown would draw attention to the disaster that Trump, with Republican support, is unleashing on American power, prestige, jobs, and society. Shutdowns affect voters' lives and hit at kitchen table issues. Drawing attention is a big part of fighting Trump, as long as Democrats use it to drive media coverage and tell the country that they'll let the government shut down rather than let Trump destroy our Schumer's recent refusal to make a deal with Senate Maioritv I eader lohn Thine on
Supreme Court Voting Rights Act Unsigned Orders in Tru with a alfierent agency. "Before we do anything, I really feel it's incumbent upon me to - on the record here — to apologize to Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they think that anything this court has done has been done in defiance of a precedential action of the Supreme Court of the United States," said Judge Young, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. "I can do nothing more than to say as honestly as I can: I certainly did not so intend, and that is foreign in every respect to the nature of how I have conducted myself as a judicial officer," he added. Since the beginning of President Trump's second term, the Supreme Court's conservative majority has sided with White House in nearly every case it has considered.
Take action early and often throughout the month of September. Actions you can take to back Senate Dems as they stand up for a fighting CR Post on social media (Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc) asking Democrats in Congress to stand firm and accept nothing less than a CR that constrains Trump. Video content can be particularly compelling, especially if you share what matters most to you. Bonus points if you tag your senators and representatives! Good hashtags: #FightingCR, #ShutTrumpDown. We will reshare content if you tag us: please follow us on Bluesky, and subscribe to our blog. Contact your representatives: You can call or email on your own or organize with members of your community to hold a call-in day. If your Senator is a Democrat, ask if they will vote against cloture (i.e., support a filibuster), unless it is a fighting CR. If your Senator is a Republican, tell them you reject Trump’s lawbreaking and expect the CR to reflect that. Join your local Indivisible group and get on their weekly calls. Bird-dog public events: Go to any event your representatives appear at and
Approval ratings for Donald Trump are hitting new lows, as Americans push back against his increasingly fascist regime. Republicans often claim Trump's authoritarian overreach is justified by an electoral “mandate.” But with final counts showing more than half of the population (50.2%) voted for another candidate, this claim has always been dubious. As Trump’s approval sinks below 40%, the claim is downright laughable. Thus far, Congress and the courts—intended to check and balance Presidential power—have abdicated their roles, allowing Trump to run roughshod across the Constitution, infringe Americans’ freedoms, and erode the U.S. scientific enterprise. As the Supreme Court continues to rubber stamp Trump’s lawlessness, the urgency grows for Congress to step back into its power. Thus far, Congressional Republicans seem to remain cowed by fears of retaliation in the form of being primaried or even physically harmed. As the minority party, Democrats have had few options to vote down Trump’s agenda. One key avenue for Democrats to sway legislation is appropriations, or the budget. The next major deadline is September 30th, when the government will shut down unless Congress passes a funding bill. The Congressional plan for the end of September is a continuing resolution (CR), extending last year’s funding levels while any appropriations (budget) negotiations continue.
The Risks Are Real, But You’re Not Alone Let’s be absolutely clear: No one should feel pressured to take this path. NIH staff who refuse illegal orders may face severe retaliation from the Trump administration. They could lose their jobs. They could be doxxed, targeted by social media mobs, their mortgage records disclosed by Trump political appointees, or even raided or prosecuted by a weaponized Justice Department. No one should be judged for choosing not to take these risks. Everyone must assess their own risk tolerance, their family situation, and their financial security. This isn't a movie where heroic resistance comes without consequences. This is real life, where standing up to power can upend careers and livelihoods. But some NIH employees are at the end of their rope. They're being torn apart by contradictory and harmful guidance from above, ordered to destroy the very scientific enterprise they've devoted their careers to building. For those who have the security, the courage, and the conviction to say no—who can afford to risk their positions for their principles—this option exists. For those not in a position to be on the front lines of resistance, smaller and less risky ways to push back are also available. NIH staff can deprioritize terminations, without comment or explanation, instead investing their time in legal and needed activities like advancing the many pending grant awards. They can fail to terminate awards by taking sick leave at opportune moments, slow-walking their tasks, or feign
For those outside NIH — external scientists including at universities, allies and members of the public — you can help too. A small set of actions: Tell your members of Congress to speak out in support of NIH employees who want to uphold the law. Call your representatives, arrange meetings, and go to their town halls. Post on social media expressing support for the loyal civil servants who are acting in ways large and small to protect US science, freedom, and democracy. Tag us or email us when you post, and we will share. We are all in this together.
The Risks Are Real, But You’re Not Alone Let’s be absolutely clear: No one should feel pressured to take this path. NIH staff who refuse illegal orders may face severe retaliation from the Trump administration. They could lose their jobs. They could be doxxed, targeted by social media mobs, their mortgage records disclosed by Trump political appointees, or even raided or prosecuted by a weaponized Justice Department. No one should be judged for choosing not to take these risks. Everyone must assess their own risk tolerance, their family situation, and their financial security. This isn't a movie where heroic resistance comes without consequences. This is real life, where standing up to power can upend careers and livelihoods. But some NIH employees are at the end of their rope. They're being torn apart by contradictory and harmful guidance from above, ordered to destroy the very scientific enterprise they've devoted their careers to building. For those who have the security, the courage, and the conviction to say no—who can afford to risk their positions for their principles—this option exists.
The Right and Responsibility to Refuse NIH employees don't just have a right to refuse illegal orders—they arguably have a responsibility to do so. They need not wait for a court to rule, and they certainly don't need to blindly follow their General Counsel's office. The HHS and NIH offices of legal counsel, like the Supreme Court, have been corrupted by Republican partisans, who also are connected to the conservative legal circles that are producing the strained legal theories now common in Supreme Court decisions. This is a crucial point: NIH staff are accustomed to following "guidance" from above, including from the General Counsel's office. But legal guidance is just that—guidance, not the law. It's one interpretation of the law, often shaped by political considerations. In an usual time, when norms are upheld, rule of law holds, and political appointees follow their oath to the Constitution, it can make sense to follow guidance from above with no independent evaluation of the law. But this Administration’s partisans and Fox-host appointees are committing egregious violations of the law and Constitution. A “just say no” mindset is a hard thing for NIH staff, as at NIH it has often been the norm to follow guidance whatever it is. This differs from some other agencies, like the Department of Justice, where the culture is more focused on the law. DOJ employees have often refused to follow orders they know to be illegal.
Calvinball the cartoo
Cite as: 606 U. S. ____ (2025) 17 Opinion of JACKSON, J. (slip op., at 8, 15). Today’s exercise of equity flips that proposition on its head. Non-plaintiffs might see some benefit from district courts’ vacatur of unlawful directives because agencies will not be able to rely on them to cancel grants going forward. But the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit will see none. In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “[R]ight when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. Id., at ___ (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 21). This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules.6 We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.7 III This Court has an obligation to balance the equities before issuing the “extraordinary” relief of a stay pending appeal, Graves v. Barnes, 405 U. S. 1201, 1203 (1972) (Powell, J., in chambers), by “‘explor[ing] the relative harms to applicant and respondent, as well as the interests of the public at large,’” Barnes v. E-Systems, Inc. Group Hospital Medical & Surgical Ins. Plan, 501 U. S. 1301, 1305 (1991) (Scalia, J., in chambers) (quoting Rostker v. Goldberg, 448 U. S. 1306, 1308 (1980) (Brennan, J., i
today, however, no court can reinstate the plaintiffs’ grants—apparently, the Tucker Act “impliedly forbids” it. 5 U. S. C. §702. This novel reading of the Tucker Act undermines not only Bowen’s holding but also the basic remedial principles underlying it. Forget complete relief— the reasoning of today’s order might leave plaintiffs unable to obtain any effective relief at all. To be specific: “Unlike the district courts, . . . the [Claims Court] has no general power to provide equitable relief against the Government or its officers.” United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, 563 U. S. 307, 313 (2011); see also United States v. King, 395 U. S. 1, 3 (1969) (Claims Court lacked jurisdiction over claim that was “not limited to actual, presently due money damages” but rather sought a declaratory judgment that governmental action “was legally wrong”). This means, it seems, that the Claims Court cannot reinstate unlawfully terminated grant funding—a distinct remedy from the money damages that JUSTICE BARRETT suggests are still available in the Claims Court. See ante, at 4, n. 1. And while the Claims Court does have authority to award money damages for a breach of contract, it is not clear that it could do so here, where the right the plaintiffs seek to vindicate “is not a contract right” but a statutory one. See Crowley Govt. Servs., Inc. v. General Servs. Admin., 38 F. 4th 1099, 1110 (CADC 2022).5 This result, it should be evident, is also impossible to reconcile with the Court’s recent pronouncements. Not so long ago, the Court insisted that “the party-specific principles that permeate our understanding of equity” instruct courts to award “complete relief ” to plaintiffs and no relief to nonplaintiffs. CASA, Inc., 606
JUSTICE JACKSON, concurring in part and dissenting in part. This past spring, as March turned to April, the Court took a mere nine days to address a difficult and nuanced legal issue: whether a federal district court or the Court of Federal Claims has statutory jurisdiction over a claim that the Government violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §706, by arbitrarily and capriciously terminating federal grants en masse. See Department of Ed. v. California, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam). It chose the Court of Federal Claims. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). I viewed the Court’s intervention then—in an emergency stay posture, while racing against a fast-expiring temporary restraining order—as “equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate.” Id., at ___ (JACKSON, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 16). As it turns out, the Court’s decision was an even bigger mistake than I realized. The Court’s reasoning in California was not only “at the least under-developed, and very possibly wrong,” id., at ___ (KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 1), but also evidently resolved more than the jurisdictional dispute over the particular education-related grants at issue in that case. Today’s decision reveals California’s considerable wingspan: That case’s ipse dixit now apparently governs all A
Perhaps sensing the problems with the district court’s approach, the court of appeals tried to distinguish California in still two other ways. First, the court of appeals suggested that the district court had not invoked the APA to order the government to pay money in defiance of California, but instead invoked the APA only to vacate the government’s decision to terminate respondents’ grants. 145 F. 4th 39, 51 (CA1 2025). This Court’s precedents, however, cannot be so easily circumvented. An order vacating the government’s decision to terminate grants under the APA is in every meaningful sense an order requiring the government to pay those grants. Even the district court recognized as much, instructing the government that its “vacation of ” the grant terminations should “result in forthwith . . . disbursement of funds” pursuant to the grants. App. 160a–161a. Second, the court of appeals asserted that, unlike in California, the claims here do not “depen[d] on the terms and conditions of the grant awards.” 145 F. 4th, at 52. But that is also incorrect. In both cases, respondents’ injury and alleged right to payment stem from the government’s refusal to pay
APA’s limited waiver of immunity does not extend to orders to enforce a contractual obligation to pay money . . . . Instead, the Tucker Act grants the Court of Federal Claims jurisdiction over suits based on any express or implied contract with the United States.” 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omitted). That reasoning binds lower courts as a matter of vertical stare decisis. Moreover, even probabilistic holdings—such as California’s top-line conclusion that “the Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money under the APA,” id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 1–2)—must “inform how a [lower] court” proceeds “in like cases,’’ Boyle, 606 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1)
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES No. 25A103 NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH, ET AL. v. AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION, ET AL. ON APPLICATION FOR STAY [August 21, 2025] JUSTICE GORSUCH, with whom JUSTICE KAVANAUGH joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part. Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them. In Department of Ed. v. California, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), this Court granted a stay because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations. California explained that “suits based on ‘any express or implied contract with the United States’” do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (quoting 28 U. S. C. §1491(a)(1)). Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA. As support for its course, the district court invoked the “persuasive authority” of “the dissent[s] in California” and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated. Massachusetts v. Kennedy, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (Mass. 2025), App. to Application 232a (App.). That w
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH v. AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSN. BARRETT, J., concurring guidance to different forums. First, logic: Vacating the guidance does not reinstate terminated grants. If one simply flowed from the other, the District Court would have needed only to vacate the guidance itself. Cf. Bowen v. Massachusetts, 487 U. S. 879, 910 (1988) (one judgment vacating HHS decision). Here, by contrast, the District Court separately “vacated” the grant terminations and ordered the Government to pay plaintiffs sums due under the agreements “forthwith.” App. to Application 160a. Second, law: Even if the guidance and grant terminations are linked, vacating the guidance does not necessarily void decisions made under it, as the First Circuit recognized. 145 F. 4th 39, 50 (CA1 2025); see also, e.g., D. A. M. v. Barr, 486 F. Supp. 3d 404, 415 (DDC 2020) (vacatur does not necessarily “eras[e] from legal existence all past adjudications under the vacated rule”). The claims are legally distinct. And if the CFC has exclusive jurisdiction over the grant terminations, see California, 604 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 2), the plaintiffs cannot end-run that limit simply by packaging them with a challenge to agency guidance.1 Two-track litigation results from “[t]he jurisdictional scheme governing actions against the United States,” which “often requires . . . plaintiffs to file two actions in different courts to obtain complete relief in connection with one set of facts.” United States v. Tohono O’odham Nation, 563 U. S. 307, 323 (2011) (SOTOMAYOR, J., concurring in judgment); see also ibid. (stating that a claim seeking “to ——————
Administrative Procedure Act. The District Court declared unlawful and vacated both the guidance and the individual terminations, and the First Circuit denied the Government’s request for a stay. Both courts treated NIH’s termination of grants and its issuance of guidance as distinct agency actions. The Government sought a stay from this Court. As today’s order states, the District Court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims (CFC). See Department of Ed. v. California, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam). In my view, however, the Government is not entitled to a stay of the judgments insofar as they vacate the guidance documents. Plaintiffs frequently seek vacatur of in
John CronanOn the C-SPAN Networks: John Cronan is an Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division in the Department of Justice with three videos in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a 2018 News Briefing. Most appearances with Donald J. Trump (2), Peter "Pete" King (2), Lee M. Zeldin (2). Most common tag: Immigration.Appearances by Title:c. November 1, 2017 - c. PresentActing Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division, Department of Justice Videos: 3 Recent Appearances President Trump Roundtable on Immigration May 23, 2018 President Trump Roundtable on Immigration President Trump was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and New York Republican Representatives Peter King… White House Daily Briefing February 6, 2018 White House Daily Briefing At the daily White House briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the President Trump was not looking for a government sh… President Trump Remarks on Combating MS-13 February 6, 2018 President Trump Remarks on Combating MS-13 President Trump met with law enforcement officials, lawmakers, and members of his cabinet to discuss immigration policy and t… See all appearances Appearance Stats Filter By Search Appearances
previously unreported speeches that provide a sweeping vision for a second Trump term. In private speeches delivered in 2023 and 2024, Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, described his work crafting legal justifications so that military leaders or government lawyers would not stop Trump’s executive actions. He said the plans are a response to a “Marxist takeover” of the country; likened the moment to 1776 and 1860, when the country was at war or on the brink of it; and said the timing of Trump’s candidacy was a “gift of God.”
Defendants failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits with respect to Plaintiffs’ ultra vires claims. The panel next held that Defendants failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits with respect to Plaintiffs’ claims that the actions of the President, OMB, OPM, and DOGE violated the APA. The panel rejected Defendants’ argument that the OMB/OPM Memorandum is not a final agency action and is therefore unreviewable by the district court. Nothing in the record indicates that OMB/OPM’s actions are of a merely tentative or interlocutory nature. With respect to the merits of Plaintiffs’ APA claims, which Defendants did not contest, the panel held that OMB/OPM’s actions violated the APA for the reasons outlined in the panel’s analysis of Plaintiffs’ ultra vires claims. Accordingly, Defendants failed to show a likelihood of success on the merits with respect to Plaintiffs’ APA claims. Finally, the panel agreed with the district court that Plaintiffs would suffer irreparable injury in the absence of an injunction. Dissenting, Judge Callahan would grant Defendants’ motion to stay the district court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. In her view, Plaintiffs’ claims are not justiciable. They effectively challenge the prospective termination of federal employees in the aggregate, and therefore are precluded by the CSRA. Even if Plaintiffs’ claims are justiciable, Defendants are likely to prevail. The President has the right to direct agencies, and OMB and OPM to guide them, to exercise their statutory authority to lawfully conduct reductions in force. The district court failed to analyze and to make findings whether the reductions in force likely have resulted or will result in statutory violations, and therefore applied the wrong legal standard.
But if the Supreme Court says what Trump is doing is legal, how can we argue with them? The Republican appointees on the Supreme Court have effectively rewritten many American laws over the past 15 years, from the Voting Rights Act, to laws affecting bribery, fraud, guns, discrimination, public health, unionization, agency function, regulatory power, dark money donor disclosure, abortion rights, and money in politics. Part of the reason they have been able to change the law and Constitutional interpretation so effectively is their actions hide behind often-complex legal theories. The Court has been able to legislate in this way in part because they have cultivated a situation where only a small set of highly experienced lawyers gets to weigh in on what the law says. To stop the Court from imposing the Trump political agenda on us, we can and should stand up for broad legal and Constitutional principles. In fact, one school of Constitutional law, “popular constitutionalism,” holds that the Constitution derives its legitimacy and meaning from the public, not merely from the small circle of legal experts that engages with the courts. If the Supreme Court grants a stay in this case, it will be shredding fundamental principles of the Constitution, including on Congressional power of the purse and discrimination. And we should say that: “No Stay. SCOTUS: Stop Backing Trump’s Project 2025.”
How bad is this Supreme Court, really? It is very, very bad. The Court has ruled in favor of Trump on the shadow docket in 17 straight cases. The actions of the Court this year have been described, in quotes from different parties, as “lawless,” “mak[ing] a mockery of the careful work responsible district judges do,” “utterly lawless,” “a lawless rubber stamp for Trump’s authoritarian agenda,” “unerringly blessing Trump’s power grabs,” “facilitat[ing] [Trump’s] abuses of power by expanding executive authority to new heights,” “lawless,” and.. (you guessed it) “lawless.” The conservative justices have been called, by establishment scholars, “lawless utter extremist partisan hacks,” and their shadow docket orders called “nonsense.” In these cases the conservative supermajority on the Court is not doing legal reasoning. It is back-filling legal arguments to enable the Trump/Project 2025 agenda. It certainly appears the Court conservative supermajority does this because it is composed of Republican politicians who agree with Trump politically. (Some speculate another major reason is to preserve the power the Court has accrued to itself.) But we, as the public, should try to avoid being sucked deep into legal arguments. Instead, just say: the grant terminations are illegal, the district court and First Circuit made that clear, and the Supreme Court should not issue a stay.
How might the Supreme Court justify a stay? When shadow docket orders are issued, no justification is required, so there may be no reasoning at all. But we may get some explanation, as we have seen in prior shadow docket rulings this year. While it is impossible to predict what the Supreme Court will use as its legal arguments, there are two pieces of information that suggest the Court will wave its hands, cite a technicality, and say Judge Young did not have the right to rule on this case. The first indication comes from the Supreme Court’s shadow docket unsigned order about grant terminations in April, in Dept of Education v. California. The Court cited an 1887 law, the Tucker Act, which says that any claims against the federal government involving “money damages” must be brought in the Court of Federal Claims. A similar finding would mean Judge Young’s ruling in a federal district court would be invalid, and the plaintiffs would need to sue again in another court. Both Judge Young and the First Circuit convincingly argued in their decisions why this Tucker Act theory did not apply, but the Supreme Court could easily throw this aside. There is a second hint the Court will use this legal reasoning: a Trump-appointed district judge in New York recently ruled that an NSF grant case must be taken to the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. That judge, John Cronin, is a Federalist Society (FedSoc) member. The FedSoc community is one place where novel legal theories that support Republican political ends are developed, workshopped, and exchanged. The New York judge’s decision could be plausibly read as a signal that the FedSoc community, including the FedSoc-aligned judges on SCOTUS, has settled on this approach to kill legal challenges to the Trump/Project 2025 grant terminations.
lf should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
What can we do? Write to newspapers, take to social media, hold events. Make noise. "No stay. Hands off NIH, SCOTUS." The Court is a political body that responds to public opinion. In fact, Brett Kavanaugh last week "made clear he closely follows press coverage, podcasts, and social media posts about the Supreme Court."
Is the Supreme Court really a political body? Isn’t it gauche to criticize respected judges? Don’t we need to respect the Supreme Court in order to protect rule of law? As law professor Eric Segall has argued, “The Supreme Court is Not a Court, and The Justices Are Not Judges” — instead, the Court acts like a super-legislature and the judges act like politicians. As another law professor, Josh Chafetz, put it: “The judges are out of control.” The US Supreme Court now does not function as a constitutional court that decides narrow legal issues. Some of the reasons that SCOTUS is so influenced by politics include: that there are a small number of lifetime judges (so parties to cases can plan sophistic ‘legal theories’ years in advance to flatter specific judges), and that it can choose almost any issue to rule on. The composition of the court is also broken: that there has been a multi-decade Federalist Society/Leonard Leo effort by the right, funded by billionaires, to find lawyers that agree with them, groom them, and elevate them to the Court. Because liberals did not do the same, the Court now is not just Republican-biased, but it is doing politics and legislating from the bench. Given the lawless Court, protecting the rule of law in fact requires criticizing the Court, not standing aside while they shred our laws and enable a lawless president to shred our government.
How might the Supreme Court justify a stay? When shadow docket orders are issued, no justification is required, so there may be no reasoning at all. But we may get some explanation, as we have seen in prior shadow docket rulings this year. While it is impossible to predict what the Supreme Court will use as its legal arguments, there are two pieces of information that suggest the Court will wave its hands, cite a technicality, and say Judge Young did not have the right to rule on this case. The first indication comes from the Supreme Court’s shadow docket unsigned order about grant terminations in April, in Dept of Education v. California. The Court cited an 1887 law, the Tucker Act, which says that any claims against the federal government involving “money damages” must be brought in the Court of Federal Claims. A similar finding would mean Judge Young’s ruling in a federal district court would be invalid, and the plaintiffs would need to sue again in another court. Both Judge Young and the First Circuit convincingly argued in their decisions why this Tucker Act theory did not apply, but the Supreme Court could easily throw this aside. There is a second hint the Court will use this legal reasoning: a Trump-appointed district judge in New York recently ruled that an NSF grant case must be taken to the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. That judge, John Cronin, is a Federalist Society (FedSoc) member. The FedSoc community is one place where novel legal theories that support Republican political ends are developed, workshopped, and exchanged. The New York judge’s decision could be plausibly read as a signal that the FedSoc community, including the FedSoc-aligned judges on SCOTUS, has settled on this approach to kill legal challenges to the Trump/Project 2025 grant terminations. Whatever legal justification the Supreme Court might concoct to give them cover to protect Trump, our message to the public now is simple: “No Stay. SCOTUS: Stop Backing Trump’s Pr…
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Is the Supreme Court really a political body? Isn’t it gauche to criticize respected judges? Don’t we need to respect the Supreme Court in order to protect rule of law? As law professor Eric Segall has argued, “The Supreme Court is Not a Court, and The Justices Are Not Judges” — instead, the Court acts like a super-legislature and the judges act like politicians. As another law professor, Josh Chafetz, put it: “The judges are out of control.” The US Supreme Court now does not function as a constitutional court that decides narrow legal issues. Some of the reasons that SCOTUS is so influenced by politics include: that there are a small number of lifetime judges (so parties to cases can plan sophistic ‘legal theories’ years in advance to flatter specific judges), and that it can choose almost any issue to rule on. The composition of the court is also broken: that there has been a multi-decade Federalist Society/Leonard Leo effort by the right, funded by billionaires, to find lawyers that agree with them, groom them, and elevate them to the Court. Because liberals did not do the same, the Court now is not just Republican-biased, but it is doing politics and legislating from the bench. Given the lawless Court, protecting the rule of law in fact requires criticizing the Court, not standing aside while they shred our laws and enable a lawless president to shred our government.
My grant wasn’t affected in this case. Why will this SCOTUS case affect me? It would increase burden on already overwhelmed NIH staff. Any further interference at NIH, any re-termination by SCOTUS, will gum up the works at NIH. NIH staff are near the breaking point. This will increase their workload even further, and that will put all award actions at risk. If you are waiting on an NIH award, this affects you! Trump's frequent policy changes have already created substantial delays in NIH funding, and NIH staff are scrambling, racing against the clock to get out awards before funds expire at the end of the fiscal year. Every delay matters.
The Supreme Court has been behaving in a ‘lawless’ and political fashion, according to many legal experts (see FAQs below), and the Court seems likely to stay the trial court’s order, allowing the Trump administration to re-terminate the grants.
But today, Republicans have fewer fears of backlash than they’ve had in the past. In the eight-plus years since 2016, they have seen few consequences for overreach. So, under Trump, now in 2025, Republican Party leaders have just decided to go for it: to blow up NIH in order to achieve their political goals, to erode the fundamental rationale of the Democratic party they oppose by weakening government, attacking universities, and changing the social compact. Going back to the question many people have asked: “Why are they destroying NIH? I don’t understand!” They’re destroying NIH for political advantage, at the expense of cancer research and the American public. To strip power from the ‘information class’ and enthrone the Republican party in power for as long as possible. Karl Rove told us this plan over twenty years ago.
Verdict Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia Justia Home Columnists Topics Archives Resources Subscribe Search verdict.justia.com Search The Roberts Court Puts a Velvet Glove on the Iron Fist of Anti-Trans Backlash 23 Jun 2025 Michael C. Dorf The Roberts Court Puts a Velvet Glove on the Iron Fist of Anti-Trans Backlash ShareShareShare Posted in: Constitutional Law In 2023, Tennessee enacted SB1, a law that, by its terms, has as one of its intended