The Trump Administration’s Continued War Against Science, Research, Public Health, and the Rule of Law – Part 8

This article is the eighth in a series, all of which are referenced above, and the focus is the continuing onslaught on science, healthcare and public health, and the rule of law. Since the 1990s, the public and private sectors have mobilized to coordinate, fund, build, expand and sustain one of most vibrant and impactful scientific communities in the world. But in little more than one year, this administration has engaged in a relentless campaign of targeted and sustained attacks against America’s highly interconnected network structure of scientific research and development. The specifics of the dozens of destructive actions taken by this administration have been documented in this series. The overall goal of these articles is to track and identify the magnitude of the loses we have sustained and the damage done to our economy, the lives of countless Americans who will suffer from the termination of vital research and routine vaccinations, and to our free and fair elections.

In addition to continued attacks on healthcare and research, this administration is actively working to dismantle the foundation of non political hiring and employment for career federal service positions. Mandates by OPM to restructure the government hiring system in favor of employees who are loyal to this president’s agenda focus on replacing, via RIF, VERA/VISA and firing, career civil servants.

Our country is experiencing a daily deluge of executive level actions that span every sector, every state, and inevitably impact every person who lives and works here. But the ten thousand foot view of our daily life remains cluttered with an uninterrupted barrage of news – about the war in the Middle East, the rising price of gas, food, and housing, incessant ICE raids, air travel disruptions, and viable threats to our electoral system. A closer look reveals what is not top of the news, which is the focus of this series. While the other stories are deeply important, they have significant coverage. On the other hand, the health and welfare of infants, children, young adults, women and men throughout America receives less attention. Science, medicine, and public health issues are on a longer horizon. Cases of infectious diseases have increased in many states, ACA cuts have limited healthcare coverage for 23 million people, and medical research has been defunded. However, there has been a dearth of continuous top line reporting on the short and long term impact of these actions, which will inevitably impact all populations in this country, as well as our economy and financial stability, and the quality of our lives.

The anchors for this article, via Science and Nature, spotlight the severity of America’s growing crisis in the knowledge economy due to the ongoing defunding and censorship of the sciences and research:

Science – Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce. That exodus was only 3% of the 335,192 federal workers who exited last year but represents 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or health fields employed at the end of 2024 as then-President Joe Biden prepared to leave office. The numbers come from employment data posted earlier this month by the White House Office of Personnel Management (OPM). At 14 research agencies Science examined in detail, departures outnumbered new hires last year by a ratio of 11 to one, resulting in a net loss of 4224 STEM Ph.D.s. The graphs that follow show the impact is particularly striking at such scientist-rich agencies as the National Science Foundation (NSF). But across the government, these departing Ph.D.s took with them a wealth of subject matter expertise and knowledge about how the agencies operate.

and Nature – US science after a year of Trump. A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce More than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion. These are just a few of the ways in which Donald Trump has downsized and disrupted US science since returning to the White House last January. As his administration seeks to reshape US research and development, it has substantially scaled back and restricted what science the country pursues and the workforce that runs the federal scientific enterprise. A year into Trump’s second presidential term, Nature presents a series of graphics that reveal the impact of his administration on science.

CONTENTS

  1. Medicine, Healthcare, Research and Public Health
  2. Climate Science – Censorship
  3. Federal Government Employees – Politicizing Civil Service
  4. Military – DEI – Censorship – Discrimination
  5. Education – DEI – Censorship – Discrimination
  6. Public Lands and Censorship
  7. Federal Employees – Loyalty Oaths and Firing Nonpartisan Civil Service Employees
  8. Freedom of Information [FOIA]
  9. Democracy – Elections
  10. Democracy – Legal Representation

Medicine, Healthcare, Research and Public Health

Judge halts RFK Jr.’s vaccine overhaul, citing flawed process. The judge said the government has undermined its history of recognizing the importance of involving independent experts in setting the national public health agenda. Washington Post, March 16, 2026. A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration from implementing sweeping changes to the nation’s childhood immunization schedule, siding with major medical organizations that argue Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unlawfully altered vaccine policy and improperly reconstituted a federal vaccine advisory panel. Under Kennedy, the federal government has cut the number of shots routinely recommended to children, including for flu, hepatitis A, rotavirus and meningococcal disease. Kennedy also dismissed all 17 members of the vaccine advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year, installing new members, several of whom have criticized vaccines, especially covid-19 mRNA shots.

Judge Strikes Down Kennedy’s Vaccine Policies. The New York Times, March 16, 2026. In a severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda, a federal judge in Massachusetts on Monday blocked the government from implementing a series of decisions on vaccines made over the last year by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The ruling also reversed, at least for the time being, all decisions made by the panelists that Mr. Kennedy appointed to the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations on which vaccines Americans should take. The court decision will prevent the committee from meeting later this week, as it was scheduled to do. The judge’s ruling brought an abrupt halt to the major changes that Mr. Kennedy, who has long been skeptical of vaccines, had set in motion, upending national vaccine policy and making sweeping revisions to the recommendations for what shots are given and when. Those included cutting down the number of diseases covered by routine immunization, and restricting access to Covid vaccines, two pillars of Mr. Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.

Americans’ trust in the CDC’s vaccine recommendations declines markedly under Trump. Scientific American, March 17, 2026. Just six in 10 Americans trust the federal government’s childhood vaccine recommendations, a new poll finds. That marks a notable drop from June 2025, when 71 percent of poll respondents said they trusted the government’s vaccine guidance. The greatest decline was among Democrats—from 81 percent to 66 percent—although Republicans’ and Independents’ trust also waned. About one in three people polled by Ipsos and Axios said they have more confidence in vaccine guidelines provided by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), an independent medical group, than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. AAP has been sharply critical of the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to U.S. vaccine policy over the last year. Just 8 percent of survey respondents said they prefer guidance from the CDC, which has historically set vaccine policy for the country.

The dark roots of RFK, Jr.’s public health ideology. How Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s ideas about public health—from vaccines to seed oils—are shaping Americans’ health. Scientific American, March 13, 2026.

Women and early-career researchers hit hardest by NIH grant cancellations. While the cuts hit all demographics, younger biomedical researchers may have suffered the most from the Trump administration’s actions, a new study says by Laura Dattaro, special to C&EN. Shortly after the second Donald J. Trump administration took office, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) canceled or paused thousands of previously awarded grants. Those cancellations did not affect everyone equally, according to an analysis published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A.: Women lost greater proportions of their funding than did men, while men lost more money as a whole. Early-career researchers also lost hundreds of millions in grants designed to help them launch into biomedical research. “While headlines quickly reported the scale of the cuts, we realized there was very little information about who was actually being affected,” lead investigator Diego Fregolent, a computer scientist at the University of North Dakota who has studied gender differences in science funding, writes in an email to C&EN. Fregolent and his colleagues analyzed grants canceled between February and August 2025 listed in Grant Witness, a database of terminated federal grants maintained by a group of data scientists. The researchers searched for those grants in the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools: Expenditures and Results (RePORTER) module to fill in details such as funding amount, type of grant, institution, and principal investigator names. They then used computer programs to infer an awardee’s gender based on their name, and they directly confirmed gender identities when possible. Their data is publicly available. During the study period, the NIH terminated 2,291 active grants comprising $2.45 billion; the agency froze another 1,534 grants. At the 10 institutions with the most terminations, men collectively lost more money than women—$2.66 billion versus $1.12 billion, Fregolent found. But the data showed signs that women may have suffered greater impacts to their work, Fregolent says: About 58 percent of funding was still unspent for projects led by women, compared with 48 percent of funds for men. And a higher proportion of women’s canceled money had been committed to planned research expenses such as paying staff. Together, these findings suggest that women lost their grants earlier in the research process, Fregolent says…

I Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14 – Elizabeth Ginexi – How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research. For decades, the National Institutes of Health published between 650 and 850 Notices of Funding Opportunities each year. These announcements tell the research community which diseases need study, which populations are underserved, which scientific gaps need filling. They are how NIH directs resources toward problems that won’t get solved by waiting for whatever grant applications happen to arrive.

  • In 2024, NIH published 756 funding announcements.
  • In 2025, it published 120.
  • In 2026, as of March 15, it has published 14.
  • I spent 22 years as a program official at NIH writing these announcements. I know what they accomplish and what happens when they disappear. This essay is about what the data reveals and what it means for every disease, every research area, and every population that depends on NIH-funded research.

Figure 1. NIH NOFOs Published Over Time. What Research Funding Announcements Actually Do. A Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is how NIH tells researchers what the agency needs. It specifies a research problem, explains why it matters, describes the approach NIH is looking for, and sets aside dedicated funding to solve it. NOFOs exist because not all research needs are obvious to individual investigators. When a new pathogen emerges. When clinical trials reveal an unexpected side effect that needs investigation. When one population experiences a disease at higher rates than others but nobody knows why. When a promising scientific approach exists but no one is applying it to a specific problem. These are moments when waiting for unsolicited grant applications is not enough. Writing a NOFO was one of my primary responsibilities as a program official. When my institute identified a gap, I would work with scientific experts to define the problem precisely, determine what kind of research was needed, and draft an announcement that would attract the right investigators. The announcement would be reviewed by our advisory council, posted publicly, and researchers across the country would know: NIH has identified this as a priority and has set aside funding to address it. This is scientific stewardship. It is not top-down control of what researchers can study. Investigators can always submit unsolicited proposals on any topic within an institute’s mission. But NOFOs allow program staff to actively direct resources toward problems that need attention rather than passively waiting to see what applications arrive  And then it stopped…

U.S. Considers Withholding H.I.V. Aid Unless Zambia Expands Minerals Access. The New York Times, March 16, 2026. A draft State Department memo outlines ways the Trump administration may ratchet up pressure on the African country by ending health support “on a massive scale.” The State Department is considering withholding lifesaving assistance to people with H.I.V. in Zambia as a negotiating tactic to force the government of the southern African country to sign a deal giving the United States more access to its critical minerals. “We will only secure our priorities by demonstrating willingness to publicly take support away from Zambia on a massive scale,” a draft of a memo prepared for Secretary of State Marco Rubio by the department’s Africa Bureau staff says. A copy of the memo was obtained by The New York Times. Some 1.3 million people in Zambia rely on daily H.I.V. treatment that is provided through the decades-old U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (known as PEPFAR) and on tuberculosis and malaria medications that save tens of thousands of Zambian lives each year. The Trump administration is considering whether to “significantly cut assistance” as soon as May, to increase pressure on Zambia, the memo says. In the wake of the Trump administration’s broad cut to foreign aid last year, the State Department has been pushing countries to sign new agreements pledging to meet certain conditions to receive American funds. Twenty-four countries have signed agreements so far, worth a total of $20 billion in health aid over five years. In most cases the main requirement on the recipient country is that its government commit to increasing its own health spending.

Inside the Turmoil at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s C.D.C. Forty-three current and former C.D.C. employees on the changes they say are replacing science with ideology — and making Americans more vulnerable. The New York Times, March 25, 2026.

Climate Science – Censorship

The Judiciary Relies on Unbiased Scientific Evidence. It Was Just Censored. Benjamin Santer, March 26, 2026. In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Bill Barr – the former Attorney General of the United States – defended the removal of the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The Reference Manual provides guidance to judges on issues related to many different areas of science. The Fourth Edition of the Reference Manual was developed jointly by the Federal Judicial Center and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), in a rigorous and transparent process. After Republican Attorneys General demanded the removal of the climate science chapter from the published Reference Manual, the Federal Judicial Center acceded to their request. Republican AGs are now targeting the removal of the climate science chapter from the uncensored version of the Reference Manual on the NASEM website. The AGs threaten negative consequences if NASEM leadership does not consign the climate science chapter to a deep memory hole. Mr. Barr is not a climate scientist, yet he opines on the state of “attribution science” in the climate science chapter of the Reference Manual. Mr. Barr characterizes attribution science as contested, unsolicited science. It is not. For over three decades, attribution science has revealed that human-caused climate change is science fact, not science fiction. The evidence for a “discernible human influence on global climate” is overwhelming. It’s true that mature scientific understanding is never universally accepted. Flat-earthers still populate the internet. Mr. Barr’s former boss in the White House still mischaracterizes climate science as a “con job.” Anti-vaxxers still spread misinformation about vaccine safety, now from positions of power within the current Administration. But the Earth is round. Emissions from fossil fuel burning have altered the global climate. Vaccines do save lives. The Trump Administration is not a fan of climate science. It’s inconvenient. It’s bad for the fossil fuel business – a major supporter of the Administration…Irrespective of whether the United States is ready or not, human-caused climate change is here. It’s on our doorsteps. It’s in our backyards.

Unlike the Reference Manual, reality can’t be censored. Emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning have already warmed the land surface, the oceans, and the atmosphere. Attribution scientists have already identified human fingerprints all over Earth’s climate system – in the multi-decadal changes in temperature, moisture, ice coverage, and dozens of other observables. And the slow, planetary-scale warming that our actions have caused has already altered the properties of heat waves, extreme rainfall, and droughts. Links between warming and these extreme events are not a “partisan debate.” They are real. We ignore them at our peril. Mr. Barr may not like what attribution science tells us, but censoring the science is not the way forward for U.S. courts or for our society. Removing the climate science chapter from the Reference Manual might be a win for the energy interests Mr. Barr’s law firm represents. It’s not a win for the many millions of Americans who are already dealing with the serious harms of human-caused climate change. It’s not a win for judges who are already deciding cases that require knowledge of climate science. Unlike the flawed report recently issued by the U.S. Department of Energy, the climate science chapter of the Reference Manual is a reasonable representation of the state of attribution science. The findings of the chapter are in accord with findings from other national and international assessments. While there is ample room for debate on the best policy responses to climate change, the basic science should not be in dispute. The evidentiary chain is clear. Pollution from fossil fuel burning has changed Earth’s climate. If we do not deal with this reality, reality will deal with us.

Federal Government Employees – Politicizing Civil Service

After slashing federal jobs, Trump administration ramps up hiring. Washington Post, March 8, 2026. The hiring push is unfolding under new rules designed to give the White House greater influence over the government’s 2-million person civilian workforce. The hiring push is unfolding under new rules designed to give the White House greater influence over the government’s 2 million-person civilian workforce. The administration has lifted restrictions imposed during last year’s reductions and created job classifications that make it easier to hire employees aligned with the president’s priorities — and fire those who aren’t. Kupor, who was sworn in last July, said the administration hopes to rebuild in part by rebranding the government as a launchpad for college graduates and early-career professionals and by focusing on recruitment for health care, program management and technology roles. In recent months, the administration has moved to centralize hiring decisions, expand the role of political appointees in recruitment and roll back diversity initiatives adopted under previous administrations. Together, the shifts amount to changes supporters say will make government more responsive to elected leadership. But critics warn they could erode long-standing protections meant to keep the civil service nonpartisan.

Military – DEI – Censorship – Discrimination

The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee sharply criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday for blocking the promotion of four Army officers — two Black men and two women — to be one-star generals. The New York Times, March 28, 2026. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island said Mr. Hegseth’s intervention in an Army promotion matter violated rules that promotions in the military services should be based on “individual merit and demonstrated performance.” After a service board approves a list of colonels to be promoted to general, the defense secretary is not supposed to intervene, military officials say. The New York Times reported on Friday that for months, Mr. Hegseth pressed senior Army leaders, including Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, to remove the four names from the list of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men. But Mr. Driscoll refused, citing the officers’ decades-long records of exemplary service. Earlier this month, Mr. Hegseth broke the logjam by unilaterally striking the names of the four officers from the list, though it remains unclear whether he has the legal authority to do so. On Friday, Mr. Hegseth announced that President Trump had approved his new list of 29 Army colonels to be promoted. “If these reports are accurate, Secretary Hegseth’s decision to remove four decorated officers from a promotion list after having been selected by their peers for their merit and performance is not only outrageous, it would be illegal,” Mr. Reed said in a statement. “Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers

Education – DEI – Censorship – Discrimination

Trump Administration Begins Investigations Into Three Medical Schools. The Justice Department’s demands for admissions-related data from Stanford, Ohio State and the University of California, San Diego, represent a flex of federal power. The New York Times, March 26, 2026.

States’ lawsuit argues Trump’s college data mandate threatens student privacy. March 12, 2026. An Associated Press analysis of 20 selective colleges found that nearly all saw a drop in Black freshman enrollment compared with 2023.  A coalition of mostly Democratic-led states is suing the Trump administration over a new federal requirement that would force colleges to report detailed admissions data, including race, gender, test scores and financial aid for individual students. For roughly 40 years, the federal government’s primary way of collecting data and information about colleges and universities across the U.S. has been a database called Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, or IPEDS. Included in IPEDS data is information on enrollments, graduation rates and financial aid, and some of this data has informed higher-ed policies and research.  In August, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the Department of Education to use IPEDS data as a way to track whether colleges are considering race in admissions decisions. Trump’s directive was preceded by the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned colleges from considering race directly in admissions decisions.  The Trump administration isn’t just looking for demographic data from IPEDS, but also is rolling out a new reporting mandate for four-year colleges — the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) — to report detailed admissions data such as race, gender, test scores and financial aid levels. Colleges were expected to begin complying with the new reporting requirement this year, with responses due March 18, according to the suit. A coalition of 17 states led by Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking to block the new mandate.  The states argue the ACTS survey imposes onerous reporting demands on universities and requires institutions to collect data they have not historically collected and may not be compelled to expose due to student safety.

Public Lands and Censorship

Ranking Members Heinrich and Merkley Demand Answers from Trump Administration on Efforts to Erase History on Public Lands – March 6, 2026 Heinrich, Merkley, colleagues to Burgum: Removing or sanitizing exhibits that depict the realities of our past sets a dangerous precedent by signaling that history can simply be erased or altered when those in power do not like the truth presented  U.S. Senators Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ranking Member of the U.S. Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) demanding answers from the National Park Service (NPS) following reports that NPS staff across the country are removing signage from national parks about slavery, Tribal history, and climate change.

  • The senators began the letter, “The Department of the Interior’s decision to remove the exhibit deprives park visitors of a full and accurate understanding of American history.”
  • The senators continued, “The removal of exhibits by NPS has become a troubling trend sadly. Not only has this Administration ordered the removal of exhibits related to slavery, it has ordered national parks around the country to remove exhibits or signage related to Native American history, climate change, and environmental impacts.”
  • The senators concluded the letter by requesting that Secretary Burgum detail the Department of the Interior’s rationale for removing signage from national parks and whether the exhibits will be replaced. 
  • In addition to Heinrich and Merkley, the letter was signed by U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).
  • Read the full letter here and below:

Federal Employees – Loyalty Oaths and Firing Nonpartisan Civil Service Employees

After slashing federal jobs, Trump administration ramps up hiring. Washington Post, March 8, 2026. The hiring push is unfolding under new rules designed to give the White House greater influence over the government’s 2-million person civilian workforce. The hiring push is unfolding under new rules designed togive the White House greater influence over the government’s 2 million-person civilianworkforce. The administration has lifted restrictions imposed during last year’s reductions and created job classifications that make it easier to hire employees aligned with the president’s priorities — and fire those who aren’t. Kupor, who was sworn in last July, said the administration hopes to rebuild in part by rebranding the government as a launchpad for college graduates and early-career professionals and by focusing on recruitment for health care, program management and technology roles. In recent months, the administration has moved to centralize hiring decisions, expand the role of political appointees in recruitment and roll back diversity initiatives adopted under previous administrations. Together, the shifts amount to changes supporters say will make government more responsive to elected leadership. But critics warn they could erode long-standing protections meant to keep the civil service nonpartisan.

Federal Harms Tracker – The Federal Harms Tracker is a new data and storytelling project developed by the Partnership for Public Service to demonstrate what is at stake when the federal government is weakened from within. The project documents how the Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to dismantle federal institutions, funding streams and infrastructure are disrupting critical public services and agency work. The tracker also illustrates how the consequences of these actions will ripple across communities for years to come.  While the impact of government management decisions can often be abstract or difficult to trace, the erosion of government capacity has a measurable effect on the public. The Federal Harms Tracker makes the outcomes of these decisions visible by measuring and mapping cuts to federal personnel, funding and infrastructure. We pair this data with curated media reports and stories from our Service to America Medals® program to reveal the tangible ways these reductions affect your government, your community and the economy. Built with both immediate urgency and long-term vision, the Federal Harms Tracker is intended to help the public, the media and policymakers understand the damage already done and the risks ahead. Through this project and its suite of products, the Partnership will monitor the long-term implications of the Trump administration’s actions and highlight how making our government less capable and effective reverberates far beyond Washington, D.C.

Freedom of Information [FOIA]

Recognizing the Worst in Government Transparency The Foilies were written by EFF’s Beryl Lipton, Dave Maass and Aaron Mackey and MuckRock’s  Dillon Bergin, Kelly Kauffman and Anna Massoglia. Art by Shelby Criswell. For the last six years, a class of journalism students at the University of Nevada, Reno, has kicked off each semester by filing their first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The assignment: Request copies of complaints sent to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about their favorite TV show, a local radio station, or a major broadcast event, such as the Grammys or the Super Bowl halftime show. The students are learning that the federal government and every state have laws establishing the public’s right to request and receive public records. It’s a bedrock principle of democracy: If a government belongs to the people, so do its documents. In the past, the FCC always provided records within a few weeks, if not days. But that changed in September when students requested consumer complaints filed against NPR and PBS stations to see if there was absolutely anything at all to merit defunding public media. Seven months later — crickets.

TRAC Reports, Inc. and Professor Susan B. Long have secured a decisive legal victory against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York. Judge David N. Hurd granted TRAC’s motion for summary judgment and rejected all of the government’s arguments for withholding records, ordering the agencies to begin producing vast quantities of case-by-case immigration enforcement data from the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID). The lawsuit, filed in December 2023, challenged ICE and CBP’s refusal to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for comprehensive data from the EID – a database that captures and maintains information related to the investigation, arrest, booking, detention, and removal of individuals encountered during immigration and law enforcement operations. TRAC sought linked person-by-person data on individuals with removal cases and those apprehended by CBP, along with associated code files and lookup tables necessary to interpret the data. Despite statutory deadlines having elapsed, both agencies failed to produce any responsive records.

Homeland Security  The Department of Homeland Security’s banner year of lawlessness included backsliding on its transparency obligations. In response to a request from the nonprofit American Oversight, DHS stated that it was no longer automatically archiving text messages sent between officials. The department clarified that it had a new, and much worse, records retention policy. Instead of archiving officials’ text messages as the agency had done before, DHS now asks officials to take screenshots of any text messages conducting government business on their work phones.  It’s hard to see the change as anything more than a giant middle finger to the public, especially because the Federal Records Act requires agencies to retain all records officials create while conducting their public duties, regardless of format. We won’t hold our breath waiting on DHS officials to dutifully press the volume and power button on their phones to record every text message they send and receive.

Democracy – Elections

The Supreme Court Could Make It Harder to Vote by Mail in the Midterms. The New York Times, March 29, 2026. The Supreme Court is hearing Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case backed by Trump allies that seeks to block states from counting mail ballots arriving after Election Day, even if they are postmarked on time. The ruling could invalidate hundreds of thousands of ballots across at least 18 states that currently allow grace periods. This would disenfranchise large numbers of voters and rewrite election rules mid-election cycle. It is part of Trump’s long-running agenda to make voting harder and discredit election outcomes he does not like.

Trump Will Not Accept the 2026 Results. These Are the Legal Weapons to Force Certification. Glass Empires – W. A. Lawrence – Trump’s strategy depends on convincing the public certification is already decided. Trump is not attempting to win the election. Trump is attempting to establish the outcome as settled before certification, because a public that accepts inevitability becomes far easier to override. The public record establishes a coordinated effort to control certification. Constitutional authority to defeat that effort holds across controlling precedent. Protective filings must be in place before Election Day and before state certification deadlines begin to close. The decisive variable remains preparation completed in time. Since January 2025, actions to expand federal control of election administration have moved from proposal into execution. Courts have blocked portions on constitutional grounds. Legal countermeasures stand ready. Effective use requires speed, coordination, and sustained pressure applied before administrative strain. The period that converts vote totals into governing authority runs from Election Day through canvassing, certification, litigation, and the seating of the new Congress on January 3. Preparation completed before those deadlines determines the outcome. Responses assembled after administrative strain cannot restore control. American elections transfer governing authority through a statutory and constitutional process requiring convergence of canvassing, certification, judicial review, and final recognition within fixed time limits. Governing authority exists only when those steps close within those limits.

In California, a Republican Sheriff Seizes Ballots, Prompting Criticism. The New York Times. March 16, 2026. A Republican sheriff in California seized more than 650,000 ballots from a recent election while launching a fraud investigation that state officials say lacks credible evidence. The move, based on claims already debunked by election authorities, comes as the sheriff runs for governor and echoes Trump-backed election disinformation. Seizing ballots without evidence is a direct attack on election integrity. It turns law enforcement into a political weapon to manufacture distrust, undermine public confidence, and lay groundwork for future election interference.

Democracy – Law

DOJ guts office that helps indigent immigrants obtain affordable legal aid. CBS News, March 23, 2026. The Justice Department reassigned the senior attorneys running a decades-old program that accredits non-lawyers to provide legal aid to low-income immigrants, effectively freezing its core functions. The move leaves the program without staff authorized to approve or renew applications, disrupting legal support for thousands of immigration cases. Undermining access to legal representation strips vulnerable immigrants of due process protections in complex immigration proceedings. It shows a deliberate weakening of legal support systems, increasing the risk of unjust deportations and systemic inequities in the courts.

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