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The Paper Trail: March 7, 2025

The Big Contracts DOGE Hasn’t Cut; Dine With the President for $5 Million; EEOC Walking Away from Transgender and Nonbinary Workers; and More.

Mar 07, 2025

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Working with Whistleblowers on Oversight & Investigations: POGO’s virtual training on an introduction to oversight will be Friday, March 21 at 12 noon. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register HERE.

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Top stories for March 7, 2025

Judge extends block on Trump’s federal assistance freeze indefinitely: U.S. District Chief Judge John McConnell ruled in favor of dozens of states Thursday, finding that President Trump’s funding freeze encroached upon Congress’s power of the purse. The judge ordered the administration to disburse all remaining frozen funds and prohibited it from freezing appropriated federal funds in the future. (Melissa Quinn, CBS News)

Judge orders Trump administration to pay some foreign-aid bills by Monday: U.S. District Judge Amir Ali set a deadline of 6:00 p.m. Monday for the administration to pay a large batch of backlogged invoices for foreign aid programs, but he sharply scaled back the amount of money that will need to be sent out. (Josh Gerstein, Politico)

🔎 See Also: Trump administration considering criminal referrals in USAID fight (Laura Kelly, The Hill)

🔎 See Also: State Department further scrutinizes foreign aid for DEI, climate and transgender projects (Phelim Kine, Politico)

Trump to Cabinet: Musk has no authority to fire workers: President Trump convened his Cabinet on Thursday to deliver a message: You’re in charge of your departments, not Elon Musk. Trump told the group that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy. (Dasha Burns and Kyle Cheney, Politico)

🔎 See Also: OPM retroactively edits probationary firing guidance to note it did not order probationary firings (Eric Katz, Government Executive)

CIA begins firing recently hired officers: Some officials said the firings were based on performance, but others said there were fewer firings in areas like collecting information on China and Mexican drug cartels. Critics say removing newly recruited officers would eventually create gaps, hurting efforts to collect information and analyze a broad array of areas, and waste the large amounts of money spent training new agents. (Julian E. Barnes and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: DOGE wants them “gone” but makes it hard for federal workers to move on (Danielle Paquette, Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: Trump’s cuts to federal work force push out young employees (Madeleine Ngo, New York Times)

Judge blocks Trump administration from firing Democratic member of Merit Systems Protection Board: U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras enjoined the administration from removing Cathy Harris from the MSPB, which has experienced a surge in cases as a result of the president’s mass firings. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

Trump administration ordered to reinstate thousands of fired USDA workers: MSPB Chair Cathy Harris ruled Wednesday that the recent dismissals of more than 5,600 probationary USDA employees may have violated federal laws, and that the employees must get their jobs back for at least the next 45 days. (Josh Gerstein, Politico)

Removed acting Commerce IG returns in wake of Trump’s IG purge: Roderick Anderson, the acting inspector general of the Department of Commerce, had briefly served in that position last year but was removed after he was implicated in an alleged whistleblower retaliation incident. (Julienne McClure, Project On Government Oversight)

GSA says it will republish a retracted list of potential federal buildings to sell: The GSA on Wednesday clarified that a list posted earlier this week of hundreds of “non-core” federal buildings that it will consider selling, which the agency has since taken down from its website, “will be republished in the near future after we evaluate this initial input and determine how we can make it easier for stakeholders to understand the nuances of the assets listed.” (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

🔎 See Also: GSA lease terminations hit GAO offices doing national security work (David DiMolfetta, Government Executive)

🔎 See Also: Federal workers sent back to the office, then told the office is going away (Aaron Wiener, Washington Post)

Trump signs order targeting law firm Perkins Coie: For the second time in recent weeks, President Trump suspended a law firm’s security clearances. Perkins Coie represented Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. During that campaign, lawyers at the firm worked with Fusion GPS, which was connected to the Steele dossier. (Brett Samuels, The Hill)

People are paying millions to dine with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago: Business leaders are paying as much as $5 million to meet one-on-one with the president at his Florida compound, while others are paying $1 million apiece to dine with him in a group setting. According to a source, the money is going to Trump’s presidential library. (Leah Feiger, Louise Matsakis, and Jake Lahut, Wired)

🔎 See Also: Who paid for Trump’s transition to power? The donors are still unknown (Ken Bensinger, New York Times)

Elon Musk & DOGE

DOGE staffers bring U.S. Marshals to small federal agency that denied them access: Employees of DOGE — accompanied by senior State Department official Pete Marocco and five U.S. Marshals — gained access to the U.S. African Development Foundation (USADF) headquarters in downtown Washington yesterday, a day after the small aid agency blocked DOGE from entering. The show of force triggered a federal lawsuit against the administration by USADF’s leader. (Brianna Tucker, Washington Post)

Musk’s group targets child support database full of income data: Over the last several weeks, DOGE has clashed with civil servants over attempts to access privileged information or systems. Earlier this week, however, DOGE targeted what is described as perhaps the most sensitive of all. (Jeff Stein and Dan Diamond, Washington Post)

Republicans quiet as DOGE slashes GOP-backed pro-democracy group: The International Republican Institute’s power-packed GOP board, which included Secretary of State Marco Rubio until two months ago, wasn’t enough to spare the group from DOGE's chainsaw. (Liz Goodwin, Washington Post)

The big government contracts DOGE hasn’t touched: Contract cuts are disproportionately targeting small businesses and nonprofits owned by women and minorities. So far, no contracts with four of the largest defense contractors have been cut. (Emily Badger et al., New York Times)

Federal grant program opens door to Elon Musk’s Starlink: Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service could benefit from a rules change in a $42 billion federal grant program aimed at expanding high-speed internet access. (Cecilia Kang, New York Times)

Other DOGE News:

→ Musk promises better communication between Republican lawmakers, DOGE

→ DOGE is driving Social Security cuts and will make mistakes, acting head says privately

→ The law everyone is suddenly turning to because of DOGE

→ We found Elon Musk’s DOGE email address and we’re fighting to reveal his messages

→ Leaked list shows DOGE is lawyering up

Dobbs Aftermath

Florida seeks drug prescription data with names of patients and doctors: The Florida insurance regulator’s demand for an unusually intrusive trove of data on millions of prescriptions filled in the state last year is raising concerns that the government is trying to get information about compliance with state bans on abortion and transgender transition care. (Reed Abelson and Rebecca Robbins, New York Times)

Russia-Ukraine War

Ukraine fears Musk may cut vital Starlink internet amid Trump pressure: With the pausing of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and of intelligence sharing, Ukraine fears that Elon Musk’s vital Starlink internet service will also be cut. (Serhiy Morgunov and Adam Taylor, Washington Post)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Firings begin at the Pentagon: veterans, civil servants caught in the crosshairs: Dismissals of the DOD’s 5,400 probationary employees have begun in at least four offices: the Defense Health Agency, the Defense Logistics Agency, the Navy, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. (Patricia Kime, Konstantin Toropin, and Rebecca Kheel, Military.com)

🔎 See Also: At least one Pentagon agency has begun firing probationary workers (Bradley Peniston and Lauren C. Williams, Government Executive)

VA plans to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year: A leaked memo calls for VA — working in partnership with DOGE — to slash its workforce to 2019 levels. The VA has been staffing up in recent years to accommodate the flood of veterans newly eligible for care and benefits under the PACT Act. (Eric Katz, Government Executive)

Marines and soldiers discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine show limited interest in rejoining: Roughly 650 Marines and Army soldiers, representing about 8% of the troops who were forced out of the military for refusing to get the COVID vaccine, have expressed interest in returning to service. (Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press)

Pentagon signs AI deal to help commanders plan military maneuvers: Arms control advocates are campaigning against military use of AI, arguing that humans must maintain direct control of weapons to guarantee their use stays within ethical bounds. (Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post)

Business and Finance

Once a champion for trans workers, the EEOC is now walking away: In the last several weeks, the EEOC, the primary enforcer of anti-discrimination laws in the workplace, moved to dismiss several cases involving transgender and nonbinary workers. (Jessica Silver-Greenberg, New York Times)

Trump agencies drop dozens of Biden-era cases against crypto, other companies: In a little more than a month, the new administration has halted or tried to dismiss cases or investigations against at least 89 companies, according to a new report, representing a quarter of the prominent investigations and enforcement actions inherited from the Biden administration. (Carrie Johnson, NPR)

Health Care

Judge blocks Trump orders to stop funds for trans youth health providers: Federal funding for hospitals across the country that provide gender-transition treatments for people under the age of 19 will remain in place under U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson’s preliminary injunction. (Amy Harmon, New York Times)

NIH reels with fear, uncertainty about future of scientific research: In just six weeks, the Trump administration overturned NIH’s leadership, slowed its main mission of identifying the best new science to fund, and silenced personnel at the biggest sponsor of biomedical research in the world. (Carolyn Y. Johnson and Joel Achenbach, Washington Post)

You’ve already paid $6 billion for weight-loss drugs you can’t afford: U.S. taxpayers spent an estimated $6 billion researching, developing, and implementing new weight-loss drugs. Yet Americans are now paying pharmaceutical companies up to 11 times more for these medicines than consumers in other countries. (Helen Santoro, The Lever)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ What the data shows about Trump’s immigration enforcement so far

→ Frustration grows inside the White House over pace of deportations

→ U.S. suspends costly deportation flights using military aircraft

→ Trump administration rethinking Guantánamo immigrant detention plan amid cost issues and power struggles

→ State Department unveils visa restrictions on foreign officials in immigration crackdown

→ Privately run immigration detention center that previously held families in Texas will reopen

Other News:

→ Trump administration moves to politicize top HR officials following firing at IRS

→ Trump’s plans to slash IRS staff could derail agency amid tax season

→ Official who safeguards whistleblowers drops lawsuit protesting his firing by Trump

→ How Dan Bongino would run the FBI according to Dan Bongino

→ Supreme Court deals blow to EPA in dispute over federal water pollution rules

→ State Department halts global monitoring of air pollution

Because It’s Friday

Giant goldfish found in Pennsylvania prompts a warning for fish owners: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service posted pictures of football-sized goldfish whose owners released them into the wild in an effort to call attention to the problems the fish can create in local waterways. “From cute to brute,” reads one photo caption. (Gina Vivinetto, Today Show)