We don’t know about you, but we sure find it reassuring to have an education secretary with a real flair for prose style. Linda McMahon’s shouty letter to Harvard, sent yesterday to make official the cessation of federal grants to the university, starts off by proclaiming the federal government’s “sacred responsibility to be a wise and important¹ steward of American taxpayer dollars,” and only gets more, ah, remarkable from there:

Why is it, we ask, that Harvard has to teach simple and basic mathematics, when it is supposedly so hard to get into this “acclaimed university”? Who is getting in under such a low standard when others, with fabulous grades and a great understanding of the highest levels of mathematics, are being rejected?

Harvard has even been embroiled in humiliating plagiarism scandals, exposed clearly and plainly in the media, with respect to your then University President, who was an embarrassment to our Nation.

Happy Tuesday.

All Is Not Peachy

by Andrew Egger

Yesterday’s news that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp won’t challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff in 2026 came as a heavy blow to Peach State Republicans, who saw their popular governor as easily their best shot to knock off the Democratic incumbent. But the GOP operatives I spoke to were trying to make the best of it. In their telling, the Senate wouldn’t be good enough for Kemp.

“He would hate the Senate,” Republican consultant Brian Robinson told The Bulwark. “He would hate the commute. He would hate being one of 100. He would hate not getting things done.”

“What’s the upside?” said former state Rep. Scot Turner. “Going to a dysfunctional, do-nothing Senate? Not exactly a good consolation prize for someone of his caliber.”

In a not-so-distant past, governors would be much more inclined to launch bids for the United States Senate, seeing it as a logical next step in the accumulation of political power. But this year, the current is flowing in the opposite direction. Sen. Michael Bennet has said he’s leaving the chamber to pursue a gubernatorial run. Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn are considering gubernatorial bids themselves. Govs. Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, and former Gov. Chris Sununu have all said they will pass on Senate runs.

It’s left political operatives in their respective states scrambling.

“As a friend, I get it and remain grateful to him for his sacrifices and all he has done,” former state party chair John Watson said of Kemp’s decision. “As a political operative, I am devastated.”

Kemp is a highly unusual figure in Republican politics—the longtime Trump enemy who remains personally Trump-agnostic. When he declined to back Trump’s efforts to steal the 2020 election in his state, Trump vowed political revenge. He recruited former Sen. David Perdue to primary Kemp in 2022, then campaigning heavily on Perdue’s behalf, denouncing Kemp incessantly as a “RINO,” a “turncoat,” a “coward,” a “complete and total disaster.”

Kemp just ignored it all. “I can’t control what other people that don’t even live in our state are doing,” he told me at the time. “What I’m reminding people of is my conservative record.”

When Kemp trounced Perdue by 50 points, many read it as a sign that Trump’s previously formidable sway over the GOP was on the wane. And when he easily won reelection over Democrat Stacey Abrams, it seemed proof of concept that MAGA voters weren’t strong enough to exercise a heckler’s veto over Republicans who didn’t kiss the ring.

What a difference a few years make! In 2022, Kemp, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, seemed poised to contend for the mantle of what some thought would shortly be a post-Trump GOP. Instead, as Trump came roaring back last year, Kemp again found himself in uneasy territory. Trump, campaigning in the state, turned on the charm: “Loved being in Georgia today,” he tweeted in October. “Great people, incredible spirit, Governor Kemp is doing a really good job.” Kemp was more of a cipher. Asked to discuss his relationship with Trump two weeks out from the election, the governor replied: “I want him to win—we are making sure we fight for the win from the top of the ticket to the bottom.”

Kemp’s decision to pass on the Senate may be driven by a personal affinity for the trappings of an executive office. But it also feels like a commentary on the state of the GOP.

In 2022, Kemp showed it was possible for a popular Republican governor to ignore Trump from a position of strength.

But the post-Trump future that that win seemed to (at least potentially) foreshadow is now firmly gone. And Kemp surely recognized that in the Senate, he’d have to make a hard choice: Join the Trump Cheerleader Brigade, or move at last to actively oppose the reelected president—this time from a position of relative weakness.

Georgia-watchers whisper that Kemp has his eye on the next election: the presidential contest of 2028. Hope springs eternal. For some people, it seems, the dream of a Republican party that glides out from under Trump all on its own can never really die.

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Trump Fought The Law, and the Law… Won?

by Sam Stein

Law firms that cut deals with Donald Trump to evade the harsh impact of his executive orders have privately insisted to Democrats that they are not bound to take on cases that the president requests.

In letters to Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Rep. Jamie Raskin—passed along to The Bulwark—several firms that cut deals with the White House said that under their reading of the settlements, they maintained authority to choose their pro bono clients, even if those deals required them to devote tens of millions of dollars to specific pro bono causes.

• “Latham maintains its complete independence as to the clients and matters the firm takes on, whether in our pro bono or commercial engagements,” read a letter from Latham & Watkins.

• “The agreement does not dictate or restrict what pro bono matters we will take on moving forward,” read the letter from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett.

• “We have not and will not restrict our pro bono activities or the positions we take on behalf of those clients,” read the letter from the firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft.

The letter from A&O Shearman was perhaps the most detailed. It notes that “the Agreement” requires the firm to provide $125 million pro bono and other free legal services to “three specified areas” (emphasis ours). Those areas are assisting veterans and other public servants, ensuring fairness in our justice system, and combatting antisemitism. “The Agreement does not call for, or permit, the administration or any other person or entity to determine what clients and matters the Firm takes on, whether they be pro bono matters or otherwise,” the letter reads.

The assertion of independence from these firms stands in contrast to Trump’s public utterances, in which he suggested that he may dispatch some of the firms to work on pet issues like tariffs and coal leasing. And it foreshadows the possibility that the pr