The Paper Trail: April 8, 2025

DOJ Lawyers Feeling Squeezed; DOGE Using AI to Snoop on Federal Workers; iPhone Quirk Blamed for Signalgate; And More.

Apr 08, 2025

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Announcements

Making the Most of Your Resources: Working with CRS: POGO’s virtual training on working with CRS will be Friday, April 18 at 12 noon. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register HERE.

House Offices: Are you prepared to hear from whistleblower constituents and experts? The Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds encourages all House offices and committees to designate at least one staff member as their Office Whistleblower Liaison (OWL). By appointing an OWL, your office will have the infrastructure in place to allow your team to respond more nimbly to whistleblowers who contact you. Read more about the OWL initiative on the Office’s website (PDF).

Top stories for April 8, 2025

Justice Dept. lawyers are struggling to Defend Trump’s policies in court: Career lawyers at DOJ say they feel trapped between political appointees like Attorney General Pam Bondi and judges who demand straight answers to basic questions. The department’s thinned-out civil division has borne the brunt of the growing conflict. (Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: Justice Dept. accuses top immigration lawyer of failing to follow orders (Glenn Thrush, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: Trump sidelines Justice Dept. legal office, eroding another check on his power (Charlie Savage, New York Times)

DOJ planned to send U.S. marshals to ex-employee’s home over Mel Gibson discussion: The DOJ planned to dispatch U.S. marshals to the home of former Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer to dissuade her from publicly discussing allegations that she was fired for recommending Mel Gibson’s gun rights not be restored. (Rebecca Beitsch, The Hill)

D.C. appeals court reverses Trump firing 2 independent federal board members: The court reinstated NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox and MSPB member Cathy Harris. (Jacob Knutson, Democracy Docket)

Social Security website keeps crashing, as DOGE demands cuts to IT staff: Retirees and disabled people are facing chronic website outages and other access problems as they attempt to log in to their online Social Security accounts, even as they are being directed to do more of their business with the agency online. The problems come as DOGE has imposed a downsizing that’s led to 7,000 job cuts and is preparing to push out thousands more employees. (Lisa Rein, Hannah Natanson, and Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post)

White House figures out how it texted secret bombing plans to a reporter: According to a forensic review by the White House IT office, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz’s iPhone had mistakenly saved Jeffrey Goldberg’s phone number after Goldberg reached out to the Trump campaign last year. (Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica)

Marco Rubio said he’d protect lifesaving aid overseas. DOGE disagreed: Aid groups around the globe were assured that lifesaving humanitarian assistance would be safe from White House cuts. Instead, the groups began learning Friday that officials at USAID — itself slated to be closed completely July 1 — were immediately curtailing key food and emergency medical assistance work across Africa and the Middle East. (Annie Gowen, Washington Post)

Elon Musk & DOGE

DOGE using AI to snoop on U.S. federal workers, sources say: Trump administration officials have told some government employees that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to surveil at least one federal agency’s communications for hostility to President Trump and his agenda. The team is also using the Signal app to communicate, potentially violating federal record-keeping rules. (Investing.com)

Musk's DOGE team can access sensitive data for now, appeals court rules: The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed DOGE to access Americans’ private data at the Treasury and Education departments and OPM while the government pursues an appeal, which the court is scheduled to hear next month. (Jonathan Stempel, Reuters)

Elon Musk inking multibillion-dollar Pentagon deal amid DOGE cuts: SpaceX won a Pentagon contract worth up to $5.92 billion for U.S. Space Force rocket launches. The deal would support about 50 missions through 2029, helping to launch some of the military’s most sensitive satellites. (Jason Lemon and Jesus Mesa, Newsweek)

🔎 See Also: Analysis: Under Trump and Musk, billionaires wield unprecedented influence over U.S. national security (James Risen, The Guardian)

🔎 See Also: House Democrats probe Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest with NASA (April Rubin, Axios)

Microsoft hooked the government on its products with freebies. Could Elon Musk’s Starlink be doing the same? Elon Musk “donated” Starlink internet service to the White House. The move resembles a strategy used by Microsoft: Offer the government “free” cybersecurity upgrades and consulting services, which effectively locks in federal customers because switching to a competitor at that point would be costly and cumbersome. (Renee Dudley, ProPublica)

Political Misbehavior

Maine sues USDA over funding freeze: Maine’s attorney general sued the USDA over the agency’s withholding federal funds from the state in retaliation for its refusal to comply with the administration’s orders on transgender athletes. (Brooke Migdon, The Hill)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Army cites glaring failures in drone attack that killed U.S. troops: A drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan last year was most likely preventable, according to a military investigation that found numerous failures, including outright negligence. (Alex Horton, Washington Post)

Trump administration fires female vice admiral amid widening purge of military officers: Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield is the second female naval officer to be fired by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Chatfield has been targeted for years by conservatives who have sought to purge the military of officers they deem “woke.” (Konstantin Toropin and Rebecca Kheel, Military.com)

Trump will get his showy (and likely expensive) military parade in D.C.: The president has commandeered Saturday, June 14 — the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and Trump’s 79th birthday — for a military parade that would stretch almost four miles from the Pentagon to the White House. This time, neither local politicians nor military commanders appear poised to challenge those plans. (Tom Sherwood, Washington City Paper)

Maya Angelou memoir, Holocaust book are among those pulled from Naval Academy library in DEI purge: Books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism, and Maya Angelou’s autobiography were among the 381 titles recently removed from the Naval Academy’s library. (Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp, Associated Press)

Business and Finance

Citi confronts Trump, DOGE fallout as US government’s go-to bank: For years, Citigroup has performed mostly predictable and largely invisible work for the federal government, including issuing corporate cards for civil servants and processing agency payments and payroll. Now its role as financial middleman has landed the bank in political and legal fights. (Todd Gillespie, Bloomberg)

A stunning number of electric vehicle, battery factories are being canceled: Companies that had invested in manufacturing American EV parts are now pulling back and canceling projects. (Shannon Osaka, Washington Post)

Tech CEOs spent millions courting Trump. It has yet to pay off: The biggest technology companies and their chief executives donated millions to President Trump’s inauguration, hosted parties and dinners in his honor, and allowed him to take credit for new multibillion-dollar manufacturing projects. But so far, the tech executives’ relationship with the president has been a one-way street. (Cecilia Kang, New York Times)

Health Care

RFK Jr. tells CDC to change its guidance on fluoride in drinking water: Experts say a shift in the longtime fluoridation guidance would be disastrous. (Anumita Kaur, Washington Post)

As Kennedy champions chronic disease prevention, key research Is cut: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of the “existential threat” posed by chronic diseases. But since he assumed the post, programs investing in research on diabetes, dementia, obesity, and kidney disease have been cut. (Gina Kolata, New York Times)

NIH scientists have a cancer breakthrough. Layoffs are delaying it: A big step forward in cancer therapy has been slowed by layoffs and new restrictions at NIH. (Carolyn Y. Johnson, Washington Post)

Second child dies of measles in Texas amid outbreak: It's the second known measles death in the U.S. since 2015. The Texas government said that 481 measles cases and 56 hospitalizations have been reported since late January. The outbreak has spread to bordering states. (Kyle Melnick, Washington Post)

Trump administration cuts team in charge of researching IVF: President Trump promised to expand access to in vitro fertilization and said that he will be known as the “fertilization president.” But his administration eliminated a team at the CDC in charge of researching those fertility treatments. (Sarah McCammon, NPR)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ Supreme Court temporarily blocks order requiring return of wrongly deported migrant

→ Supreme Court lifts hold on Venezuelan deportations to El Salvador for now

→ Trump administration aims to spend $45 billion to expand immigrant detention

→ As Trump cracks down on immigration, U.S. citizens are among those snared

→ First Trump targeted pro-Palestine students. Now all kinds of foreign students are at risk

Other News:

→ Attorney General Pam Bondi begins dismantling Biden-era gun policies

→ Marjorie Taylor Greene makes huge stock market play just days before tariffs announced

→ Will extreme spending and partisanship undermine trust in state supreme courts?

Upcoming Events

📌Who holds the power of the purse in Washington today? Brookings Institution. Wednesday, April 16, 3:00 p.m. - 4:15 p.m. ET. Saul Auditorium, 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, D.C.