It’s been about a month since I introduced the “DOJ-in-Exile” idea. So I wanted to give you an update on my progress getting it off the ground. First of all, I got quite a lot of interest and excitement from a lot of TPM Readers who were interested in being involved in some fashion. I also got, in response to I think one passing mention about looking for funds, a number of soft commitments in the 5- or 6-figure range. “Commitments” slightly overstates it. I wasn’t trying to discuss anything at that level. I was just interested in hearing about general interest and willingness. Based on those conversations I thought that even from the small group of people I was in touch with, there was likely at least a few hundred thousand of funding available. That’s a pretty good start on the funding front from such a low-key ask.

You have probably seen that a three judge panel of the  U.S. Court of International Trade has ruled that Trump’s tariffs are unlawful. So done and done, subject to appeal of course. Trump imposed the tariffs under a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The three judge panel said he greatly exceeded his powers. That means that most of the tariffs which have dominated American and even global politics for the last couple months are out, subject to appeal. I need to dig a bit more into this but I believe some of the tariffs imposed on Canada and Mexico were under separate legal authorities in which the President has clearer power. So I don’t know precisely which is which. But the gist is that most of the tariffs are out and all the “reciprocal” ones.

Yesterday, the Conference Board reported that in May consumer confidence surged by 12.3, the largest monthly increase in four years. Bloomberg said the surge was bigger than the estimates of any private-sector economists Bloomberg contacted for its survey. The data suggests consumer confidence was already moving up and then surged forward after Donald Trump made a series of “deals,” most notably with China, reducing the fear of tariffs or an economic slowdown tied to them. It’s important to note that these weren’t “deals” in any meaningful sense. He just agreed with the countries in questions, most importantly with China, to go back to the way things were before he introduced his tariffs, with small, continual, residual tariffs. In a way Trump is getting credit for caving. But in reality these shifts in consumer sentiment are rational reactions to Trump’s actions. The strangling tariffs were the problem. Trump decided to mostly get rid of them, at least for now. So people’s expectations about the economy improved. It makes perfect sense.

I want to start this week with a comment about the meta-news environment. It’s a point that may not surprise you. But it shapes everything we’re seeing today and does so with an uncanny silence. Quite simply, lots and lots of things are not being said or reported because people are afraid to say them. “Afraid” may be too strong a word in some cases, though the fuzzy, murky spectrum separating “fear” from something more like calculation is a key feature of what is happening. I’m far from the first to note this. But when people do note it it doesn’t get a lot of attention because there’s not a clear empirical basis for it. What’s your basis for noting, at a society-wide level, what people aren’t saying? How do you prove — or, perhaps better to say, illustrate — that reality? And yet it is happening and it’s not difficult to see it observationally if you look closely in any one place.

U.S. District Judge John Bates of Washington, D.C. just awarded summary judgment to Jenner & Block, finding President Trump’s executive order against it unlawful and declaring it null and void.

This is remarkably strong language from a George W. Bush appointee who served on Special Counsel Ken Starr’s team:

What interests me most about the Supreme Court’s telegraphed decision ending independent agencies is the ease with which they discard their governing theories (unitary executive) when the results are ones they find unpleasant (ending the independence Federal Reserve). Let’s make a note in passing that as long as they were going to make this disastrous decision, I’m glad they were also hypocrites and exempted (or suggest they are going to exempt) the Federal Reserve, because not doing so would have made it even worse.

It’s very much of a piece with 2024’s presidential immunity decision. It is demonstrably the case that the U.S. Constitution does not provide the President with any immunity from prosecution. You can argue this from absence (it literally doesn’t provide it); you can argue it from general logic, which is admittedly an inherently slippery kind of argument (no one is above the law); perhaps most convincingly you can argue by the fact that the Constitution writers very much knew how to provide immunity where they believed it should exist and did so in the case of members of Congress (speech and debate clause). They knew how to do it and decided not to for Presidents. The most generous reading of the aptly-named Trump vs. United States is that Roberts et al. decided as a matter of policy that such immunity should exist and therefore decided to create it. But it is entirely a 21st century creation with no basis whatsoever in the actual Constitution.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the House passage of the “big, beautiful bill” of health care cuts and analyze the big “what happened” report of the 2024 election.

DHS seems to have pissed off a federal judge in one of the many ongoing litigations around gutting much of the federal government. This one is brought — ironically — by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights against DHS and is about DHS shutting down several statute-mandated offices that provide oversight of the treatment of people in DHS custody (which of course includes ICE custody). You can tell why Trump wants to abolish those offices. That’s the substance. But the technical issue is just as important and it’s one that applies to things happening across the federal government.

It’s become almost commonplace in recent years, and especially in the last four months, that the divisions among Democrats are less progressives vs. “centrists” or liberals than one between institutionalists and what we might call Team Fight. There’s a separate issue which is that there needs to be a lot more elaboration or articulation about just what “centrists” or “moderates” even are. The language is typically used as an electoral self-definition for the purposes of intra-party dynamics. But let’s leave that topic for another day. So we have the mounting knowledge that the divisions are more Team Fight vs. Team No Fight than the more ideological definitions. At the same time, though, you have non-progressives (see the problem of definitions?) worried that the highly polarized climate of 2025 will “push the party to the left.” (I have my own thoughts on that latter question.) A lot of those voices came to the fore during the Bernie and AOC barnstorming tour, which I guess is paused, at least for the moment. But for “centrists” or non-progressive liberals, if it’s really true that the real issue is Team Fight vs. Team No Fight (and I believe it is), you’ve got to get out there and do your own barnstorming tours or find other ways to demonstrate the fight.

This is just obvious. In a period of high polarization and high threat, the center of gravity of the party and inevitably the ideological center of gravity of the party will move to those fighting hardest, most successfully, with the fewest apologies.

Full statement from Joe Biden’s personal office:

Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone. While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management. The President and his family are reviewing treatment options with his physicians.