A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
‘A Good First Step’
The Christian right is hailing the pair of anti-trans Supreme Court decisions yesterday, seeing the Court’s permission for states to ban trans girls from participating in school sports as a key victory on their path to further eroding LGBTQ rights. That will culminate, they hope, in overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the court’s 2015 decision establishing the right to marriage equality.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, made the connection to Obergefell plain in a statement yesterday. “The Supreme Court could not dodge the cultural chaos ball it created with the redefinition of marriage,” he said in a statement on X. “Like the American people, who are connecting the dots and changing their minds on the reordering of society with the redefining of marriage, maybe the Court will eventually find its way back. This is a good first step.”
Using assaults on trans rights as a path to undermine marriage equality has been in the movement’s sights even before the court decided Obergefell. As the political shift towards marriage equality became clear, the movement began to cast Obergefell as its next Roe v. Wade — that is, a landmark decision they would spend decades fighting, notching smaller victories along the way, shaping the Court to favor their position, and ultimately overturning a 50-year precedent. With abortion, they chipped away at abortion access with petty restrictions and invasive protests, trying to craft a public position that they were the ones on the side of saving lives and protecting women from the “harm” of abortion.
With Obergefell, the Christian right set out to replicate their long-haul, intergenerational fight against Roe, specifically by waging a campaign against trans rights in state legislatures. Again, they seized this opportunity to define their position as one of “protecting” kids. They started with bathroom bills and expanded into bans on sports participation and gender-affirming care. They purported to protect girls from predators in bathrooms and locker rooms; from “biological boys” taking away their sports trophies; and from lifesaving health care they falsely denigrated as “child abuse.” All this activity in state legislatures queued up the court fights that would lead to decisions like yesterday’s, and the court’s 2025 decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti, which upheld red state bans on gender-affirming care.
Movement leaders are leaving no doubt that ending marriage equality is their ultimate goal, again by casting themselves as defenders of children. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported earlier this year that Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and other Christian right groups are backing a new campaign, based on long debunked claims, to reverse Obergefell on the grounds that marriage equality has resulted in “child victimization.”
Trump Pocketed $2 Billion from the Presidency Last Year
Is there even a word for this? Unprecedented, unrivaled, stunning, betrayal, are all words I’ve seen describing this, but none of them remotely approach adequately describing it. According to his financial disclosure reports, President Donald Trump cashed in to the tune of more than $2 billion from his presidency in 2025, most of it, $1.4 billion, from his cryptocurrency ventures. Much of this crypto windfall comes from Trump’s brazen exploitation of presidential power to allow the already illicit world of cryptocurrency to run wild, free of government oversight. World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto firm, partners closely with the crypto exchange Binance, which, as Public Citizen’s Zach Everson reported earlier this year, “pleaded guilty to ‘anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting, and sanctions violations’ regarding Iran and other sanctioned countries and entered into a settlement acknowledging that it unlawfully facilitated financial transfers to organizations designated as foreign terrorists by the United States.” Trump pardoned its founder, Changpeng Zhao, in October.
Under Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission stopped regulating memecoins. Trump profited to the tune of $636 million from his $TRUMP memecoin in 2025, more than he made from all his businesses combined in 2024. The presidency has been a massive money-making scheme for him.
Trump also disclosed “over $80 million in income from settlements with various media companies,” according to Reuters. Filing baseless defamation lawsuits apparently pays off very well, but not as well as your own unregulated memecoin.
Trump Announces Midterm Convention
Trump announced yesterday that the Republican Party would host a midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, in September. Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist who writes the Good Politics/Bad Politics newsletter, noted this would be the first time a party held a midterm convention since the Democrats did it when Jimmy Carter was president. (In other words, not auspicious.) He predicted this event would be “just a two-day rally, not a convention as such,” but that “it’ll be fun for Dems to attack every candidate who attends and attack Trump for all the no-shows.”
Trump apparently chose Texas to help boost the prospects of his endorsed candidate in the closely-watched Senate race, Ken Paxton. But as new New York Times/Siena polling shows, Democrats now have an “enthusiasm edge” in some states that Trump won in 2024, including in Texas, where the Senate race is tied. “That excitement appears to be helping Democrats blunt natural Republican advantages in states like Iowa, Ohio, Alaska and Texas that have trended Republican in recent years — and which voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 by double-digit percentages,” the Times reports. So the question is whether a Trump rally dressed up as a party convention will be the one neat trick Trump might think it is.
Judge Enjoins Additional Pentagon Press Restraints
A federal judge in Washington yesterday granted a preliminary injunction against a Pentagon policy requiring reporters for the New York Times and other outlets to have a minder inside the Pentagon, a policy enacted after the judge halted previous Pentagon restrictions on press freedom. The judge cited numerous statements by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his deputies denigrating the media, including Hegseth’s attacks on “legacy Trump-hating press” who produce an “endless stream of garbage,” and his comparing reporters to Pharisees.
To the GOP, Empathy for Colleagues Is for Suckers
TMZ caught up with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) yesterday, after fellow Republican Tom Kean (NJ) returned to Congress after a four-month absence owing to depression. In comments emblematic of today’s GOP — callous, mocking, and enjoying it — Boebert called Kean’s absence “embarrassing,” adding that “who gets four months off of work because they’re sad?” She added, without irony as she stood in the District of Columbia, that for his constituents, his absence was “literally taxation without representation.”
Trump Welcomes Convicted Felon Tina Peters to White House
On the other hand, Trump has long expressed great empathy for former Colorado election official, convicted felon, and MAGA hero Tina Peters, who was sentenced in state court to a nine-year prison term in 2024 as a result of her tampering with voting machines in a quest to prove Trump’s false rigged election claims. Under pressure from Trump, Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D), commuted Peters’ sentence in May. Yesterday, Trump welcomed Peters to the White House, posting on Truth Social that it was “an Honor” to have lunch with her. “She knows that the Voting Machines are RIGGED, that the Mail In Ballots are a DISASTER, and that our Elections are very Dangerous and Corrupt at a time when, with the Threat of Communism, we must be very wise and careful!” Trump wrote. He was quick to add, of course, that his 2024 victory was “TOO BIG TO RIG, but they tried.”
Republicans Go Off the Deep End After Birthright Decision
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) proposed covering up the Statue of Liberty with a bedsheet.
Top White House advisor and anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller suggested on Fox News banning pregnant women traveling to the United States, lest they deliver their child here. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has introduced legislation to ban U.S. travel by pregnant women. No, you are not hallucinating. This is the Republican Party in 2026.
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getting earlier and earlier.
Yesterday the discussion was whether this applied to all journalists or only NYT, as this was their lawsuit being responded to.
To all of those who say “it’s only a few trans girls, we can’t let this be something we campaign on”, is it ok to do that now - when they admit what has been said here more than once regarding where they go next? Or is that still too controversial for you?
Yet again, my congresscritter Boebert covers herself in glory. What a disgrace she is. Really hoping that her Dem opponent beats her.