A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Presumption of Irregularity
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s elaborate attempts to bypass Senate confirmation and federal judges in appointing U.S. attorneys blew up in spectacular fashion Monday in a sentencing hearing in a child pornography case.
A federal judge in New Jersey absolutely let rip in the hearing, first reported by the New York Times, over the leaderless U.S. Attorney’s Office there. After an outside-the-district federal judge ruled that Alina Habba’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney was legally invalid, Bondi named a trio of prosecutors to lead the office. The same outside judge ruled last week that the workaround was also invalid, but gave the administration a chance to appeal the ruling. But in the meantime, the outside judge warned, federal criminal cases across the entire state remained in jeopardy because of Bondi’s machinations.
The threat to the sanctity of real live criminal cases seemed to most raise the ire of U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee who happens to be the first Muslim federal judge. Monday’s hearing culminated with the judge:
- ordering one of the trio of USAO leaders to leave his courtroom under threat of being removed since he wasn’t an attorney of record in the case;
- summoning the trio of prosecutors to appear at a future hearing to testify about their roles (he later agreed to a Trump DOJ request to delay the followup hearing until May);
- raising the possibility in the hearing that Habba, who now supervises U.S. attorneys as a senior adviser to Bondi, was still running the office from the shadows (Habba denies this claim).
The transcript from the highly charged sentencing hearing is worth a look. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read. Quraishi, himself a former prosecutor in the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, set the tone with hapless line prosecutor Daniel Rosenblum from the outset:
Further provoking Quraishi’s ire was the fact that the Trump DOJ apparently botched the child porn case by entering into a plea agreement with the defendant before it had finished gathering evidence from his phone.:
When new child porn images were discovered by investigators, DOJ was already locked into a plea deal that was seeking a sentence range of less than one-third of the advisory range, the judge said — although he got the prosecutor to admit that plea deal applied to charges related to only one minor and the newly discovered images showed different children.
What most stood out from the hearing transcript — aside from the blistering tone — was the judge’s linking of Bondi’s unlawful workarounds on U.S. attorneys with the risk to criminal cases, a point he returned to and for which Rosenblum was poorly positioned to answer. In summoning the trio of office leaders to testify, the judge warned he might seek further testimony from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Habba.
Quraishi closed the hearing with a final admonishment for the U.S. Attorney’s Office: “You have lost the confidence and the trust of this court. You have lost the confidence and the trust of the New Jersey legal community, and you are losing the trust and confidence of the public.”
Joe Kent Has ‘Reasons’ for Iran War Oppo
With DNI Tulsi Gabbard set to testify to Congress today, her Senate-confirmed right-wing deputy Joe Kent took the opportunity to resign over the Iran war while waving his hands about … the Jews.
There’s no “enemy of my enemy is my friend” analysis involved here when the motivating factor for opposing Trump’s foreign misadventure isn’t anti-interventionism but antisemitism.
Mullin’s Day in the Hot Seat
Today’s confirmation hearing for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) as DHS secretary is a good opportunity to review what a strange dude he is, despite all the encomiums from fellow senators:
- TPM’s Hunter Walker: The ‘Cinematic’ And ‘Fantastical’ Life Of Trump’s DHS Pick
- WaPo: DHS pick Mullin boasts of ‘special assignments’ abroad but offers few details
2026 Ephemera
Despite claiming just a few days ago that he would make an endorsement in the Texas Senate GOP primary runoff and looking poised to back incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), President Trump let the deadline for withdrawing from the race pass without backing anyone, which has to be counted as a victory for state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX).
Don’t Be Fooled
Brian Beutler on the Trump White House’s fake makeover:
What they seem to want, in other words, is to freeze their progress in place, dialing back the braggadocio, in the hope that voters sense the atmospheric differences between March 2025 and March 2026 and assume the worst is behind them.
In other words, they are hoping to salvage power through a change in rhetorical emphasis, without substantively backtracking. Their dog-and-pony approach is clearest in two realms of policy that held Trump’s coalition together: immigration and wellness pseudoscience. MAGA and MAHA.
‘A Hallmark Production in Bad Faith’
In a stinging ruling that found the Trump administration’s attempted shuttering of the Voice of America to be unlawful, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of D.C. ordered more than 1,000 VOA employees back to work.
The VOA staff must be brought back by March 23 and international broadcasting must be resumed, Lamberth ordered.
The VOA saga has dragged out for a year. At its center has been Kari Lake, the Arizona election denialist installed to shut down government broadcasters. Lamberth had had enough: “The defendants’ persistent omission and withholding of key information in this case has been a Hallmark production in bad faith.”
Judge Edges Closer to Ballroom Decision
U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of D.C. grilled Trump DOJ lawyers over the President’s vanity ballroom project in a hearing Tuesday. Leon didn’t buy the analogies the administration offered to previous modifications and alterations made to the White House over the years, rejecting them as not being of the same scale as the demolition of the East Wing and replacement with a monstrously out-of-proportion ballroom.
Leon had previously ruled that below-ground construction could continue while the case played out, then dismissed the challenge to the construction on procedural grounds. He allowed the challengers to refile and now faces an April deadline, when above-ground construction is scheduled to commence. Leon said he plans to rule by the end of March.
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I once thought that the Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy mistake in US history with respect to its impact on the whole world, but Trump’s misadventure in Iran could be far worse.
Morning Memo. The early edition!
The MM made the point the WH is trying to improve their image by being less nasty and mean-spirited in hopes of assuaging the less hardcore MAGAts and MAHAs.
But I warn folks, as the election draws near…the stuff that has most animated RW voters and plenty of others in past elections is the Trans crap they spew. They still have that card to play (and probably really lean hard on their Fake Christian Schtick as well) as November approaches. We should be prepared with good rebuttals.
They are underwater on most of their big hits…the economy, immigration, war. The other option is to keep the war simmering and try to explode it into a Holy War by November.
OT: Sorry for the rant, but I had to channel my inner Lewis Black and the rant is due.
I was reading Dave Dubya’s Freedom Rants this morning and found myself irked for no apparent reason. It dawned on me that this framing for the Iran War was the cause:
This is my sense of modern conservatism, the GOP, MAGA, and ultimately White Christian Nationalism. Do you remember when the pejorative attached to liberal was usually “Knee Jerk” implying that there was a reaction without thought? Explain to me how the last 10 years if not more have not been knee jerk reaction from the entire spectrum of the right including “libertarians?” That little snippet has been the response to every stupid thing they’ve done, jubilation, self soothing, dawning horror.
I don’t think the left is immune, but since 1995 the right has cultivated the “Act in haste, repent in leisure” style of government. Crank up the outrage machine start a culture war, do some stupid stuff and say “This wasn’t what we meant,” when the inevitable happens. @txlawyer said doomsplaining is tiresome to me yesterday. I almost certainly deserved it. The modern right is tiresome, and looking at it seems to inevitably lead to doomsplaining.
Sure the actions benefit the morbidly rich, but the morbidly rich can count on a large pool of people who see or hear very specific trigger words and loose their shit. People who truly will vote for Voldemort if he promises to hurt the people they don’t like, oops he’s hurting them too? Collateral damage.
It’s not rational, the left such as it is needs to come to terms with this. The right has created a very effective operant conditioning system for a huge swath of the population and they will not or cannot leave the experiment.
Oh, and what’s the dick way to sign off on one of these? Thank you for your attention to this.
OK. I feel better. Off for an early ride today.