If you read mainstream coverage of Vice President JD Vance’s trip to Minneapolis this week, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he went there as an eyelinered MAGA Mahatma Gandhi, asking the city a simple question: How about we just give peace a chance?
Continue reading “Vance Endorsed Slashing Civil Liberties Protections During Minneapolis Visit”It Just Got Harder for LGBTQ+ People to Address Harassment at Work
This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
A transgender worker is repeatedly and intentionally misgendered by their coworker. A workplace bars an employee from using facilities that match their gender identity. A supervisor suggests a transgender subordinate shouldn’t be in public-facing work.
Going forward, it will be more difficult, timely and costly for LGBTQ+ workers to seek justice for these and other workplace harassment issues related to their gender identities and sexualities.
Continue reading “It Just Got Harder for LGBTQ+ People to Address Harassment at Work”Listen To This: Rupture of the World Order
Kate and Josh discuss the self-destruction of Trump’s America on the world stage and Bill Cassidy’s comeuppance.
Continue reading “Listen To This: Rupture of the World Order”The Wannabe Influencer Who Runs the FBI: ‘I Don’t Read’
Morning Memo Live!
A lineup change for next week’s Morning Memo Live event: Kyle R. Freeny, a former DOJer who was a member of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and is now senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group, will be joining us. An unforeseen issue came up that prevents former Mueller team member Aaron Zelinsky from attending, but I hope to have him back for future events.
Details and tickets here for the Jan. 29 event in D.C. (TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes. Reach out to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com if you didn’t receive or can’t find it.)
Tweeting All the Way Through the Fascism
Just two of the many good (by which I mean bad) nuggets from an exhaustive series of NYT Magazine interviews with current and former FBI officials about the catastrophic leadership of Director Kash Patel and former Deputy Director Dan Bongino …
On Patel: “There was a photo taken of all the Five Eyes people, some of whom are nondisclosed, meaning their affiliation with the British intelligence service isn’t public. The Brits forwarded that picture as a keepsake for the individuals. They prefaced it with, This isn’t to be shared. But Kash has decided he wants to post it on social media. They have people trying to negotiate with the Brits about whether that’s possible. They’re fighting with the director’s office, like: You cannot post this. Do not do that. And they’re arguing, He wants a picture out.”
On Bongino: “Bongino called the field office in Detroit. In the normal course of business, if the deputy director calls at a moment like that, they’re asking: How can we help? What do you need? They can turn on all the resources of the organization. But Bongino called and asked, What can I tweet about this? The field office has to be careful — this is their boss. But the body was still there. They said, We’ll get back to you. But Bongino kept calling back, asking, What can I tweet?”
The constant urge to tweet — instead of actually running a massive organization with counterintelligence and counterterrorism responsibilities on top of its core crime-fighting duties — is especially stark when paired with a quote attributed to Patel as he waved off briefing materials: “I don’t read.”
If you need more, search for “jet skiing” in the NYT Mag piece. You’re welcome.
Jan. 6 Still Alive and Unwell 5 Years Later
Donald Trump’s never-ending revenge saga for getting busted for couping produced a few new permutations this week:
- FBI Director Kash Patel sacked more than half a dozen agents around the country, including several senior agents leading field offices, for their roles in either the Arctic Frost or Mar-a-Lago investigations, Ryan Reilly reports.
- In state court in Florida, Trump personally sued JPMorgan Chase and its CEP Jamie Dimon for a whopping $5 billion, alleging they improperly closed his bank accounts for political reasons after the Jan. 6 attack.
- In his public testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, former Special Counsel Jack Smith said he fully expects Trump DOJ officials will “do everything in their power” to prosecute him “because they have been ordered to by the president.”
- Seated behind Smith were some of the most outspoken former law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, including Michael Fanone, who did little to muffle his disdain for House Republicans:
The Renee Good Shooting
With the local medical examiner declaring Renee Good’s death a homicide (which is not the same legally as murder), former DOJ prosecutor Julia Gegenheimer explains why there is a legitimate basis for opening an investigation into the ICE shooting.
Mass Deportation Watch: Minnesota Edition
- A general strike in the Twin Cities is underway today, with a march scheduled for this afternoon.
- Three protestors were arrested on pending federal charges for disrupting a service Sunday at a church where the pastor is also the acting director of the ICE field office in St. Paul.
- In the same case, a federal magistrate judge rejected the Trump DOJ’s attempt to charge former CNN journalist Don Lemon, who reported on the protest.
- The Trump White House posted a digitally altered image of one of the church protesters during her arrest to make it look like she was crying. The Black woman arrested was actually cool and collected in the original unaltered photo:
Mass Deportation Watch: Chicago Edition
After deliberating for a little more than three hours, a federal jury in Chicago acquitted 37-year-old union carpenter Juan Espinoza Martinez on the charge of murder for hire for allegedly putting a $10,000 bounty on the head of CBP commander Gregory Bovino.
Judge Bars Retaliation Against Pro-Palestinian Activists
U.S. District Judge Judge William Young of Boston has been doing yeoman’s work protecting pro-Palestinian academics and activists from retaliatory deportations by the Trump administration. In two new moves yesterday, Young:
- ordered that members of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association were not to have their immigration statuses adversely changed except in narrow circumstances and that any attempt to deport them would be presumed to be “in retribution” for suing the government.
- unsealed dossiers prepared by the Trump administration that focused on the free speech activities, including campus protests and public writings, of five student activists who Secretary of State Marco Rubio would move to deport.
Full 5th Circuit Hears AEA Case
The uber-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the substance of whether President Trump validly invoked the Alien Enemies Act last year. The arguments zeroed in on whether there was truly an “invasion or predatory incursion” by Tren de Aragua as contemplated by the wartime statute. This case out of Texas is the most likely one for the Supreme Court to take up and finally rule on whether the president properly invoked the AEA in this instance.
Quote of the Day
“We are in a much better place today than we were at the beginning of this week. But of course, the very fact that we are relieved that a NATO country is not going to attack another NATO country tells us that we are somewhere where we never thought we would be. And that, in itself, will linger.”—Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide
Park Service Removes Slavery Exhibit
Reacting to President Trump’s “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” executive order, the U.S. Park Service has removed an exhibit on slavery at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. It was among a series of moves at parks nationwide to suppress historically accurate information and replace it with racist revisionism.
Trump Ballroom Runs Into Legal Trouble
In a hearing yesterday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon of D.C. expressed considerable skepticism that Trump had the legal authority to demolish the East Wing of the White House and construct a vanity ballroom in its place.
Leon reportedly mocked the Trump DOJ when it compared the project to President Gerald Ford’s use of private funds to build a White House swimming pool. “You compare that to ripping down the East Wing and building a new East Wing?” Leon said. “C’mon. Be serious.”
Meanwhile, the Trump-stacked Commission of Fine Arts appears prepared to greenlight the project to … I’m not making this up … spare Trump having to worry his sweet little head about it, according to Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the new chairman of the commission: “So we need to let the president do his job, and, as best we can, keep his mind off of things like this, that we can keep him rolling, and do it as elegantly and beautifully as the American people deserve for generations and further centuries into the future.”
Bovino’s Provocative Greatcoat
NYT’s fashion critic deconstructs the Pavlovian response to CBP commander Gregory Bovino’s costuming himself as an early 20th century fascist.
“Using the coat to confront crowds with armed supporters, together with Bovino’s cropped hair and the (apparently) black or dark clothing underneath, gives the unmistakable whiff of dictators and of the 1930s,” Princeton University history professor Harold James told the NYT.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
Another Escalation in Trump’s War on Blue States
Trump II’s North Star
The Trump administration has been using the president’s cruel mass deportation visions as a vehicle to, also, crack down on the residents of blue cities across the U.S. who did not vote for him. It’s a pattern we’ve seen play out almost daily, whether via selective National Guard occupations or ICE raids, since the start of his second term.
Continue reading “Another Escalation in Trump’s War on Blue States”How ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the ‘Friends of Trump’
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
Days into President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House, a cryptocurrency billionaire posted a video on X to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “Please Donald Trump, I need your help,” he said, wearing a flag pin askew and seated awkwardly in an armchair. “I am an American. … Help me come home.”
The speaker, 46-year-old Roger Ver, was in fact no longer a U.S. citizen. Nicknamed “Bitcoin Jesus” for his early evangelism for digital currency, Ver had renounced his citizenship more than a decade earlier. At the time of his video, Ver was under criminal indictment for millions in tax evasion and living on the Spanish island of Mallorca. His top-flight legal defense team had failed around half a dozen times to persuade the Justice Department to back down. The U.S., considering him a fugitive, was seeking his extradition from Spain, and he was likely looking at prison.
Once, prosecutors hoped to make Ver a marquee example amid concerns about widespread cryptocurrency tax evasion. They had spent eight painstaking years working the case. Just nine months after his direct-to-camera appeal, however, Ver and Trump’s new Justice Department leadership cut a remarkable deal to end his prosecution. Ver wouldn’t have to plead guilty or spend a day in prison. Instead, the government accepted a payout of $49.9 million — roughly the size of the tax bill prosecutors said he dodged in the first place — and allowed him to walk away.
Ver was able to pull off this coup by taking advantage of a new dynamic inside of Trump’s Department of Justice. A cottage industry of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants with close ties to Trump has sprung up to help people and companies seek leniency, often by arguing they had been victims of political persecution by the Biden administration. In his first year, Trump issued pardons or clemency to dozens of people who were convicted of various forms of white-collar crime, including major donors and political allies. Investigations have been halted. Cases have been dropped.
Within the Justice Department, a select club of Trump’s former personal attorneys have easy access to the top appointees, some of whom also previously represented Trump. It has become a dark joke among career prosecutors to refer to these lawyers as the “Friends of Trump.”
Continue reading “How ‘Bitcoin Jesus’ Avoided Prison, Thanks to One of the ‘Friends of Trump’”Secret Internal Memo Exposes the Scale of ICE’s Lawlessness
Morning Memo Live!
Details and tickets here for the Jan. 29 event in D.C. (TPM members should look out for a special discount code in your inboxes. Reach out to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com if you didn’t receive or can’t find it.)
What 4th Amendment?
A secret internal ICE memo dated May 12, 2025 gave unconstitutional guidance allowing federal agents to forcibly enter homes without judicial warrants to detain undocumented immigrants.
“The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities,” according to the AP, which first obtained the memo. It was a part of a whistleblower complaint to senators from two anonymous government officials.
DHS did not contest the authenticity of the memo, which was signed by Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE. A DHS official told the NYT that “their understanding was that the idea was piloted in one or two locations earlier this year.” (It wasn’t clear if the official meant 2025 or 2026.)
The memo acknowledged that it was offering different legal guidance than DHS had given in the past:
Although the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.
Administrative warrants are barely worth the paper they’re printed on. In contrast to arrest warrants issued by a judge based on finding of probable cause that a crime has been committed, administrative warrants are a product of the executive branch and not subject to judicial review.
Legal experts were aghast at the ICE memo and its implications.
“An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS’s own legal training materials say is unconstitutional!” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, posted.
“I try to avoid hyperbole when it comes to Trump policies, but this is absolutely frickin’ insane—on about eleventy different levels,” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said. “Massive, systemic Fourth Amendment violations because … reasons.”
In a sign that ICE knew how controversial and potentially illegal the new guidance was, the memo was not widely distributed within ICE, according to Whistleblower Aid, the group representing the whistleblowers:
While addressed to “All ICE Personnel,” in practice the May 12 Memo has not been formally distributed to all personnel. Instead, the May 12 Memo has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the Memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the Memo and return it to the supervisor.
Stanford University law professor Orin Kerr took an early and speculative stab at sussing out the underlying legal rationale the administration might be using for the memo.
The Latest From Minnesota …
- In her deadly Jan. 7 encounter with an ICE agent, Renee Good sustained three gunshots wounds, the third of which was a fatal shot to the head, according to the findings of a private autopsy described but not released by her attorneys.
- A 5 year old detained by federal agents was the fourth student in the same Minneapolis-area school district picked up by ICE in recent weeks, district leaders said. After the child and his father were detained Tuesday when they arrived home from preschool, the child was reportedly used as “bait,” the school district said, to knock on the door of his own home so agents could see if anyone was inside. ICE reportedly declined to leave the child with an adult present in the home, and the school district believes the father and child were transferred to a detention facility in Texas.
- The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, almost exclusively stacked with GOP appointees, issued an administrative stay of a lower court order that barred federal agents from arresting or tear-gassing peaceful protesters in Minneapolis.
Mass Deportation Watch
- A medical examiner has officially deemed the death of 55-year-old Cuban Geraldo Lunas Campos at a detention camp in Texas a homicide.
- Illinois officials have opened a investigation into claims that a notorious immigration raid last fall on a Chicago apartment building was prompted by a tip from building managers about Venezuelan immigrants not authorized live in the building in a potentially illegal attempt to force out Black and Hispanic tenants.
Greenland: Trump’s Damage Already Done
While there was a collective sigh of relief in Davos that President Trump seemed to temporarily back away from his most aggressive threats against Greenland, he has already unleashed a new world disorder that sets geopolitics on a dangerous new course. At the same time, there is no assurance that Trump — who doesn’t adhere to handshakes, contracts, treaties, or agreements — won’t re-up his threats against Greenland or other sovereign territories at his whim:
- “While we may no longer be literally staring down the barrel of a gun on the trans-Atlantic relationship, we are still in a very rocky place,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institute in Brussels, told the NYT.
- “The shift in the international order is not only seismic — but it is permanent,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said in a speech.
- “Our American Dream is dead,” an EU diplomat from a country that has been among the bloc’s transatlantic champions told Politico. “Donald Trump murdered it.”
Meanwhile, Greenland published a crisis preparedness brochure urging households to stock at least five days’ worth of supplies in case of a crisis.
Firing Lisa Cook Too Much Even for SCOTUS
Like Trump’s sorta, kinda, maybe step-down on Greenland, the Roberts Court’s hesitation to destroy the independence of the Federal Reserve leaves a weird feeling of not-quite relief, wariness about what comes next, irritation that it even got to this point, and frustration that the world is on bended knee hoping that malevolent actors will show a modicum of restraint.
It’s clear that whatever dispensation the Supreme Court gives to the Federal Reserve will be a special carveout, inapplicable to the entire apparatus of independent agencies constructed over the last 90 years, of which the central bank is only a part. The limits of the conservative justices’ ideological coherence has been reached, but it will not prompt a moment of reflection to rethink the entire enterprise — just a once-off exception to avoid any financial unpleasantness for the most prosperous Americans. The rest of us will benefit only incidentally.
Keep an Eye on This
The same federal magistrate judge who signed off on the search of the home, car, and person of WaPo reporter Hannah Natanson has now directed the Justice Department not to review the contents of her seized electronic devices, which her lawyers argue “contain essentially her entire professional universe.”
Magistrate William B. Porter of the Eastern District of Virginia issued the order after Natanson and the Washington Post company moved to intervene in the matter, which arises from an investigation into the allegedly improper handling of national defense information by a government contractor.
An interesting observation from Politico: “The newly released court records do not indicate whether Porter was informed that Natanson is a journalist or whether the judge determined that the 1980 law limiting searches of reporters, the Privacy Protection Act, did not apply in this instance.”
Trump Unleashes FCC on TV Talk Shows
The weaponized Federal Communications Commission is now targeting network talk shows, contending that they no longer enjoy a carveout for news programs and must provide equal airtime to political candidates.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
What Does It Mean That SCOTUS Hasn’t Ruled on IEEPA Tariffs? Nothing, Experts Said.
When, on Jan. 9, a Supreme Court decision day came and went without an opinion on the legality of President Donald Trump’s signature economic policy, deep and wide tariffs, observers exhaled.
The justices’ decision on whether Trump can levy widespread, global and indefinite tariffs using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, had been expected as early as the end of last year, an expedited ruling following oral arguments in the case on Nov. 5. But no tariffs decision came in December. When the Court announced it would release opinions on Jan. 9, many predicted that the decision in question was sure to be IEEPA. It wasn’t. The Court released another slate of SCOTUS opinions on Jan. 14. Still no tariffs ruling.
The case is about whether Trump has the power under the law to tariff countries for an indefinite period of time after making a national emergency declaration. Lawyers opposing the administration argued, among other things, that tariffs were not explicitly mentioned as a power afforded to the administration under the law in question, and that they amount to a tax on U.S. consumers. Congress holds the power of the purse and is the only body that can tax Americans; it’s a responsibility that, opponents argued, Congress would have had to have explicitly delegated.
Jan. 20, the third decision day of the year, arrived. Corporations and small businesses, global financial markets, industry attorneys and legal scholars watching the Court closely still have no decision in the Trump IEEPA tariffs case.
What gives?
There are many theories bouncing around about what is going on here: Are conservative justices, who’ve been apt to rule in a way favorable to Trump’s administration but were skeptical of the government’s legal case during November oral arguments, giving the president more time to apply his tariffs using other, more constitutionally sound statutes? Are justices amenable to Trump’s overreach preparing to give him roundabout access to Congress’ power of the purse and taking time to concoct a legal theory that supports this perversion of the roles of different branches of government? Is aparticular justice (feel free to choose which one you think it could be) strategically dragging their feet as they write a long, drawn-out dissent?
Supreme Court scholars and constitutional law experts told TPM observers shouldn’t lend much credence to any such theories. Their biggest takeaway from the SCOTUS nondecision is that there is really no takeaway.
Four constitutional law scholars shared with TPM how they’re thinking about the timing of the Supreme Court’s IEEPA tariffs decision.
Don’t Expect a Decision Quite Yet
“I don’t think the Court is ‘pushing off’ a ruling on the tariffs case; to the contrary, the norm for the Court historically has been to take its time, especially with big cases,” Stephen Vladeck, Supreme Court scholar and Georgetown University law professor, told TPM in an email. “I suspect the same is happening here — where the separate opinions just aren’t finalized yet. I’d thought all along that late February was probably the sweet spot for a decision here, and continue to believe the same.”
‘Nothing to See Here’
“If this was a normal case, I’d say there’s nothing to see here,” Michael C. Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University, told TPM. “So I suspect that they’re treating it as not presenting a kind of emergency.”
That SCOTUS hasn’t issued a decision in the IEEPA case, just over two months after hearing oral arguments, is in line with the Court’s normal timing on large, complex and consequential cases, Dorf said.
Because the administration has expressed in public its ability and plan to impose tariffs using other, less controversial statutes, Dorf posited justices might not feel rushed to rule on this case. And about the theories swirling around regarding a perceived delay by the justices?
“It’s only speculation. I think these are plausible accounts, but until they do what they’re going to do, nobody really knows,” Dorf said.
In the end, regardless of timing, “I think they probably will vote to invalidate the tariffs,” Dorf said.
Court ‘Resists’ The Idea That It’s Involved In Day-to-Day Politics
Constitutional law scholar Carolyn Shapiro put it plainly.
“I read nothing into the timing at this stage,” she told TPM.
Tariffs are a defining political issue of Trump’s second term, and, because of the way they tend to inflate prices for U.S. consumers, they were a critical aspect of the “affordability” conversation that was central to the 2025 off year election and may be key to the 2026 midterms. The Supreme Court, however, sometimes makes a point of not caring about such things, said Shapiro, founder and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
“The Court very much resists the idea that what it’s doing is political in a number of senses, but one sense is in the kind of daily work of politics,” Shapiro said. “So I think that also could be some of it, that for some of them they want to convey this view of themselves as being somehow writing ‘for the ages,’” she continued, quoting a phrase Justice Neil Gorsuch used during oral arguments in the 2024 presidential immunity case.
The view that the Court’s actions are detached from daily politics isn’t necessarily rooted in reality, Shapiro emphasized.
“I want to be clear that they are, of course, in the middle of the daily politics and they’re putting themselves there more and more with all the stuff they’re doing on the shadow docket,” she said.
Shapiro said it’s hard to know exactly how justices would rule, but highlighted that skepticism from justices during November oral arguments suggested Trump could lose the case.
“I don’t think it’s been that long, honestly. I just don’t,” she said. “They sometimes move quickly and, often when we think that they should, they don’t.”
Despite the Significant Economic Consequences, ‘This Is Not at All an Unusual Delay’
Eric Berger, a constitutional law professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law, does not view the Supreme Court’s failure to publish an opinion on this case as a “delay.”
“Oftentimes, the Court can hear arguments on a case in October or November and not issue a decision until May or June or even early July,” Berger, who studies judicial decision-making, told TPM. “So, ordinarily, this would not be considered a delay.”
The implications of a case that could see billions of dollars collected by the U.S. government returned to businesses, however, are not ordinary, Berger acknowledged.
“But again, given the complexity of the case and the schedule on which [the Supreme Court] normally operates, this is not at all an unusual delay.”
He said it’s hard to tell whether SCOTUS’ decision not to rule more quickly favors either side. The time it takes to write and finalize majority decisions, concurrent opinions, and dissents are regular procedural obligations that impact the timing of the justices’ ruling.
“It’s certainly possible that the delay signals that the Court might rule for the administration,” Berger said. “On the other hand, it’s always dangerous to read too much into oral arguments, but at oral arguments some of the justices who often vote with this administration seemed pretty skeptical of their position.”
House Dems Rally Against DHS Funding Bill, But the Senate Is Where the Real Fight Happens
Dems ‘Overwhelmingly’ Opposed
House Democrats are expected to vote against an upcoming appropriations bill funding the Department of Homeland Security because it doesn’t go far enough in restraining Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an agent killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis this month.
Congressional appropriators released a big bipartisan package on Tuesday that would fund the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security ahead of Congress’ deadline to fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year, at the end of January. The House is expected to vote on the funding package Thursday, and Republican leadership has reportedly agreed to allow a separate vote on the DHS section of the bill so Democrats can express their dismay. But absent GOP opposition, the legislation is still expected to pass the House if the Republican conference doesn’t have absentee issues.
While House Democratic leadership has come out saying it’ll vote against the DHS portion of the package — and a sweeping chunk of the House Democratic caucus is expected to do the same, including many Democratic appropriators in the House — those who plan to support the measure claim that the stuff the bill does to curtail ICE is better than nothing. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat on the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, has suggested voting for the bill is better than giving DHS a “blank check” in the form of a continuing resolution that Republicans would likely try to push through.
The details of the bill, per NBC News:
The package would keep ICE funding essentially flat at $10 billion for the rest of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, even as the agency received $75 billion of additional money for detention and enforcement from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator, acknowledged that the package did not include broad reforms to rein in ICE in a statement from her office announcing the bill. But she endorsed the package, saying it would prevent a partial shutdown and arguing that it did include some Democratic priorities.
Those supposed priorities include funding to force ICE agents to wear body cams and language that “encourages” DHS to create a new uniform policy that would “ensure that law enforcement officers are clearly identifiable as Federal law enforcement.” It also includes some cuts to Trump’s sweeping deportation budget: it “would also cut funding for ICE enforcement and removal operations by $115 million and reduce the number of ICE detention beds by 5,500.”
What really matters is how Senate Democrats respond once the legislation is brought up for a vote in the upper chamber, as Republicans will need support from at least seven Democrats to pass the bill. The Senate does not return until next week, so how exactly individual senators and Democratic leadership in the upper chamber plans to approach the appropriations bill will be clearer then.
But a few Senate Democrats have spoken out against the DHS portion of the bill. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has been calling for Democrats to oppose funding for DHS since at least last week. After the bill text was released Tuesday, he issued a statement saying it “puts no meaningful constraints on the growing lawlessness of ICE, and increases funding for detention over the last Appropriations bill passed in 2024.”
Over the weekend some other Senate Democrats followed his lead, with Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) telling CNN Sunday that Democrats should withhold their votes on DHS funding even if it means shutting down that portion of the government.
“We cannot vote for anything that actually adds more money and doesn’t constrain ICE,” he said. “I can’t speak for everybody else, but if I have to shut down the portion of ICE — just to be clear, we’re not shutting down the rest of the government — the portion of ICE that is causing this kind of harm, racially profiling people, terrorizing our cities, I know the implications of that. I know the political implications potentially of that.
“But we cannot keep funding this type of goon squads that are just spreading throughout the whole country just to enforce some weird policy position that Stephen Miller has, where he thinks that we have to punish blue cities,” he continued.
Those who support the legislation in the Senate, like top Democratic appropriator Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), are selling it as a way to claw back some of the funding cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency last year. Murray also suggested protesting the DHS portion of the bill is useless.
“ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a (continuing resolution) nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Murray told NBC. “The suggestion that a shutdown in this moment might curb the lawlessness of this administration is not rooted in reality.”
ICE Descends on Maine
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed reports that ICE agents are conducting a large scale immigration enforcement operation in Maine this week. They confirmed reports in a press release announcing its new “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine. Several mayors have criticized the uptick in arrests and, according to local reports, some school districts have locked down their schools in order to protect students from ICE’s presence.
Bessent Unconcerned!
“Denmark’s investment in U.S. Treasury bonds, like Denmark itself, is irrelevant.”
“That is less than $100 million. They’ve been selling Treasurys for years, I’m not concerned at all,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos Wednesday when asked about European investors pulling money out of U.S. Treasurys, a move many have made in response to Trump’s plans to impose 10 percent tariffs on a handful of European countries as he tries to take over Greenland.
In Case You Missed It
Check out our coverage of SCOTUS oral arguments on Fed independence today. We’ve got live coverage: SCOTUS Forced To Decide Whether It Will Keep Fed Independent of Trump
Plus key takeaways from Layla A. Jones: SCOTUS Skeptical Trump’s Truth Social Posts Count As Due Process
And Kate Riga: Kavanaugh: Trump’s Position Would ‘Weaken If Not Shatter The Independence Of The Federal Reserve’
Morning Memo: The Judicial Branch Didn’t Cover Itself In Glory In the Lindsey Halligan Saga
VIDEO: Josh Marshall and David Kurtz on What the Heck the DOJ Is Up to in Minneapolis
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Trump Marks First Year Iin Office With Unhinged Racist Rant Targeting ‘Very Low IQ’ Somalis
What We Are Reading
SCOTUS Skeptical Trump’s Truth Social Posts Count As Due Process
Justice Sonia Sotomayor summed up Wednesday morning’s two-hour oral arguments on whether or not Trump could fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in one line.
“This whole case isn’t regular.”
While Cook’s case isn’t explicitly about the Federal Reserve’s right to freedom from political manipulation, the court’s ruling will have resounding implications for U.S. central bank independence, which has been preserved since the body was created 112 years ago.
Cook’s lawyers’ arguments revolved around two contentions: that Cook wasn’t provided due process between the time members of the Trump administration accused her of criminal mortgage fraud and Trump’s attempt to remove her, and that the standard for “for cause” removal as outlined in the law had not been met. The Trump administration argued the president gave Cook adequate notice in an unconventional way: A Truth Social post.
The justices were skeptical. The elephant in the room, throughout, was how to assess actions by a president who relies on social media to make and announce policy decisions that may, for example, upend international trade, or send the military into cities and states. How much weight can and should courts put on a president’s social media posts as official action?
Cook has denied wrongdoing in this case, and the Trump administration has regularly cooked up unfounded mortgage fraud allegations against the president’s perceived enemies as part of a systematic retribution machine. A lower court and an appeals court stayed the removal until Cook’s case was fully litigated.
Cook’s lawyers hold she wasn’t afforded adequate notice and a hearing, as required by law, before Trump tried to remove her. And on Wednesday, at least some justices seemed to agree.
The case’s irregularity began “starting with the Truth Social notice, or thinking of it as notice at all,” Sotomayor said in the final moments of oral arguments, laughing. The Truth Social post, she said, “certainly didn’t invite an opportunity to be heard.”
A crux of the government’s case, as presented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, is that Cook did actually receive notice and time to respond via Trump’s prolific Truth Social presence. His post about firing Cook for mortgage fraud and screenshots of alleged evidence posted online launched the five-day period Cook had to respond, Sauer contended. Many of the justices didn’t appear convinced.
When Sauer said the administration had followed the legal process and given Cook sufficient opportunity to state her case in public, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked facetiously if Cook’s own public presentation was to be a social media post. Sauer answered simply: “Yes.”
Moments later, Justice Neil Gorsuch pushed on the government’s argument that the president had to afford Cook only minimal process. How minimal? Sauer reiterated that Trump’s Truth Social post, specifically “the five day window between the Truth Social post and the removal letter,” was enough to inform Cook of the allegations against her.
Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett emphasized at separate times during the proceeding Cook’s right to due process, leading Sauer again and again to restate that Trump’s online behavior was key to the Fed governor’s firing, and add a wrinkle that it’s ultimately up to the president to determine what process is.
It’s a bizarre and almost unserious case with dead serious consequences. Justices on Wednesday contended with the idea that a president who virtually lives online and issues some of his most important pronouncements via the social media platform he owns need only post to that platform to kick off the due process required under law for removing a Federal Reserve governor “for cause.” And even those most amenable to Trump’s executive branch expansion didn’t seem to buy into the philosophy.
Asking whether the mortgage documents that would purportedly reveal any alleged fraud were in the record in this case, conservative Justice Samuel Alito forced Sauer to admit they might not be, instead pointing back to social media.
“I know that the text of the social media post that screenshots the mortgage applications is in the record, but I don’t recall if the paperwork itself is in the District Court’s record,” Sauer said.
The admission led Alito, normally a reliable vote for Trump’s agenda, to concede the administration’s handling of Cook’s case was done so in a “cursory manner.”
The whole case tees up the Supreme Court justices to come face-to-face with the contradiction they created, holding Trump had the right to fire officers from independent agencies including the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Federal Trade Commission, but maybe not from another, extremely important independent agency: the Federal Reserve. The Fed, some justices have opined in other independent agency cases, is a unique entity shielded from presidential overreach because of its historical background and monetary policy role.
Experts told TPM it’s a tough needle to thread, given the Court’s 2025 agency rulings.