A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
‘I Never Signed Off On That’
Duh.
In the madcap world of the Trump II White House, you knew that President Trump had to be the cause of last week’s humiliating DOJ reversal of its appeal in the law firm executive order cases. And now it’s confirmed.
Within 24 hours, Pam Bondi’s Justice Department went from moving to drop its appeal of the four law firms cases it had lost to telling the appeals court … never mind.
The reversal came after Trump blew his top upon learning from news reports that the administration would be dropping its appeals, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I never signed off on that,” the WSJ quotes the president as saying in an Oval Office outburst over his displeasure with DOJ leaders.
Trump then directed White House officials to tell the Justice Department to reverse itself, which White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed: “At the president’s direction, the Department of Justice quickly amended this filing.”
There’s been considerable speculation over the exact sequence of events. Did DOJ give the White House a heads-up in advance or was it freelancing? Was the White House Counsel’s Office involved from the get-go or did it fail to “manage up” (an impossible task with Trump)? Did Trump know in advance but change his mind because he disliked the optics?
The new reporting doesn’t precisely answer those questions, but it suggests the failure was with the White House Counsel’s Office and West Wing aides, or at least that’s the DOJ perspective:
Before Trump’s intervention, top department officials believed they had signoff from the White House Counsel’s Office and Trump’s top aides to drop the case. But Trump himself hadn’t been told of the decision, the people said, and has a longstanding modus operandi in legal matters: never drop a case willingly. Many other White House aides have wanted the issue to go away for months.
On the spectrum of Trump II depredations, it’s another symptom of the underlying disease of DOJ being run out of the White House as the personal attorney of President Trump, not of the Office of the Presidency or of the public trust it represents. The only silver lining may be that the clumsy, pathetic way the DOJ conducted itself in this instance hastens the slow awakening of appeals courts judges to the reality of the Trump II threat.
Latest From the Middle East …
- While the pace of Iranian retaliatory strikes seems to be slowing, it still managed to inflict substantial damage over the past 24 hours, including forcing Iraq to suspend all oil terminal operations, striking container ships off Iraq and Dubai, and targeting fuel tanks in Bahrain.
- The U.S. was responsible for a Tomahawk missile strike on a school in southern Iran, a U.S. military investigation has preliminarily found. The strike that killed at least 175 people, many of them children, was the result of a “targeting mistake” based on old data, the NYT reports.
- “The Iranian drone attack in Kuwait that killed six U.S. service members was more severe than has previously been revealed, with dozens suffering injuries including brain trauma, shrapnel wounds and burns,” CBS News reports.
- The spillover conflict in Lebanon has claimed more than 600 lives there, as Israel continues to battle Iran’s proxy Hezbollah
The Incompetence Is Staggering
Racing to respond to the utterly predictable impact of its Iran attack on global oil prices, President Trump made the impromptu policy announcement that the U.S. government would backstop insurers shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, but as the WSJ reports, the administration had little idea what it was proposing:
U.S. officials called London insurers and brokers, trying to figure out how the market operates, industry insiders said. Some have received calls asking for confidential data on the Lloyd’s market that participants have been reluctant to share.
Experts on the insurance market tell the WSJ that insurers are still willing to underwrite shipping through the Strait of Hormuz but that shippers, understandably, aren’t willing to risk the lives of their crews.
OH MY EYES!
After aides to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth found the photos taken of him at a March 2 press briefing on the Iran attack to be “unflattering,” they barred news photographers from his subsequent two briefings, the WaPo reports. So we put together 10 choice Hegseth photos that they don’t want you see. Yeah, I don’t get it either.
Quote of the Day
“In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda.”—John Ganz
Mass Deportation Pace Slows
Since the pinnacle of Operation Metro Surge, the torrent of emergency habeas cases has slowed considerably from a peak of about 300 to 400 per day, from Jan. 16 to Feb. 17, down to closer to 200 a day in early March, according to an analysis by Politico which tracks with a separate NYT analysis on the recent decline in immigration arrests. Even the new lower number is “astonishing” compared to historical averages, Politico reports.
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Man, show me a good picture of Hegseth. I’ll wait.
Segundo!
Not all attacks involve bombs and missiles
From FauxSnooze, no less
On the spectrum of Trump II depredations, it’s another symptom of the underlying disease of DOJ being run out of the White House as the personal attorney of President Trump, not of the Office of the Presidency or of the public trust it represents.
Not even a fig leaf.