Louisiana Bans Promotion Of COVID, Flu, And Monkeypox Vaccines

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

The Quiet Before The Storm

Many of you have have enjoyed this quiet interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to unplug from the news and focus on family and friends. I did, too, but it has felt like an uncanny quiet, a pause after the GOP’s self-own chaos over the last-minute passage of a CR to fund the government and before the grueling pace of Trump II destruction begins in earnest.

Morning Memo will be around most of this week (except New Year’s Day). We’ll begin the week with a roundup of things you may have missed over the Christmas holiday and a few things to look ahead to this week.

Great Scoop

Just before the holidays, NPR had a great scoop – headlined “Louisiana forbids public health workers from promoting COVID, flu and mpox shots” – about a new policy being low-key implemented by the Louisiana Department of Health:

According to the employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear losing their jobs or other forms of retaliation, the policy would be implemented quietly and would not be put in writing.

Staffers were also told that it applies to every aspect of the health department’s work: Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department’s clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site.

Listen here:

Trump Border Czar Wants To Use Military As ‘Force Multiplier’

“Donald Trump’s team is looking at using military bases to detain migrants and military planes to boost deportations, the president-elect’s incoming border czar Tom Homan said.”–WSJ

‘How Much Did You Pay To Have Your Daughter Raped?’

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) latest grandstanding over immigration is a $100,000 billboard ad campaign to deter migrants from crossing the border with crude messages like “How much did you pay to have your daughter raped?”

Sign Of The Times

WSJ: Some Justice Department Lawyers Look for Protection—and the Exits

Elon Musk Watch

• Donald Trump dismisses talk that he’s ceded the presidency to Elon Musk as a “hoax.”
• Musk doubles down on support for German far-right party.
• Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré: Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk

For Your Radar …

When the new Congress convenes for the first time Friday, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) will try to retain the speakership after the pre-Christmas debacle over the continuing resolution to fund the federal government until mid-March and avoid a shutdown. It’s an early measure of how chaotic GOP rules in Washington will be. Matt Glassman has everything you could possibly want to know about the speaker election.

Texas Congresswoman Suffering From Dementia

Retiring Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), until April the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, has been little-seen in Washington since then and is residing in an independent living facility in Texas where she is suffering from “dementia issues,” according to reports over the holidays.

Granger’s situation was first reported by The Dallas Express. Some aspects of the initial report were disputed by Granger’s office, but the upshot is that her health issues have made serving out the remainder of her term difficult at best.

ICYMI

TPM’s Kate Riga: Ethics Committee Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ That Gaetz Committed ‘Statutory Rape’

Rudy G Faces A Reckoning

After dressing up as Santa Claus to promote his Rudy Coffee, Rudy Giuliani faces a contempt of court hearing Friday in the defamation case against him by Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The judge is already signaling it may not go well for the former NYC mayor.

‘This Is Trump’s America Now’

A Colorado man was arrested on suspicion of bias-motivated crimes, second degree assault and harassment for a Dec. 18 incident in Grand Junction when he allegedly attacked TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex, who is of Pacific Island descent:

After arriving in Grand Junction, Egan, who was driving a taxi, pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to an arrest affidavit, said something to the effect of: “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”

Alex, who had been out reporting, then drove back to his news station in the city. After he got out of his vehicle, Egan chased Alex as he ran toward the station’s door and demanded to see his identification, according to the document laying out police’s evidence in the case. Egan then tackled Alex, put him in a headlock and “began to strangle him,” the affidavit said. Coworkers who ran out to help and witnesses told police that Alex appeared to be losing his ability to breathe during the attack, which was partially captured on surveillance video, according to the document.

‘Target On My Back’

Nashville TV reporter Phil Williams was targeted by the Christian right in a pre-Christmas wave of online abuse: “Rarely in my nearly 40-year career as a journalist have I felt the target on my back as continuously and intensely as I have in the last 15 months.”

Trump Files Brief In TikTok Case At SCOTUS

“The Trump brief, on which Trump’s intended nominee to be Solicitor General, John Sauer, is counsel of record (indeed, Sauer is the only listed counsel), is a striking document. It includes a series of wholly irrelevant platitudes about Trump; and, even though it takes no position on whether the TikTok statute is or is not constitutional, it urges the Court to ‘stay’ the January 19 effective date to allow for Trump, once he comes to office, to pursue some (unspecified) political solution to the dispute.”–Steve Vladeck

Joe Biden Agonistes

Jimmy Carter dying in the waning days of the Biden presidency felt like a passing of the baton from the last one-term Democratic president whose legacy has been debated for half a century to the next. The debate over Joe Biden’s legacy is just beginning but will probably last at least as long, depending on how destructive the return to Trump turns out to be. The WaPo gives Biden world an early chance to weigh in.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

My own memories of Jimmy Carter are those of a child: As a bleary-eyed six-year-old barging in on my shaving father the morning after the 1976 election demanding to know why he hadn’t woken me in the night, as promised, with the result. He had, he assured me. Or driving the old family station wagon with the Carter-Mondale bumper sticker on it through a good chunk of high school deep into the Reagan ’80s. If you’re feeling a little nostalgic, too, our slideshow may spark some memories.

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