The Pentagon Purges Will Continue Until Morale Improves

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Black and Female Officers Targeted

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the elevation of seven Army officers to the rank of two-star general, the New York Times reports, as part of his ongoing mission to destroy the military’s merit-based promotion system and replace it with a politicized system based on personal loyalty and fealty to MAGA ideology:

More than half of the officers affected by Mr. Hegseth’s dismissals are Black or female in a force whose senior ranks are dominated by white male officers. Of the seven officers Mr. Hegseth removed from the Army two-star promotion list, two are Black and two are female.

The Pentagon purges have hit more than 80 generals and admirals so far, which represents about 10% of the military’s top officers, according to the NYT.

The destruction of a professional military has to rank among the most egregious and long-lasting of Trump II initiatives targeting government itself, along with his attacks on the merit-based civil service system, his abusive misuse of the Justice Department, his elimination of USAID, and his running roughshod over Congress’ power of the purse.

It is one of the bitter ironies of the Trump II presidency that he is destroying not just what he views as liberal shibboleths but core elements of what Republicans used to say mattered most to them — which creates a perverse future dynamic where Democrats will be expected to expend their political capital to repair everything.

Quote of the Day

“It’s been a year of murders. The Trump administration has normalized murder. It’s absolutely criminal.”—an unidentified defense official, on the one-year anniversary of the start of the lawless high seas campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats that has killed 227 civilians in 65 attacks

Warming of 1.5°C Is Now Unavoidable

A first-of-its-kind UN report titled “Limiting Overshoot” assumes that the world will exceed its 1.5°C target for warming and recommends what it calls the “best remaining option”: limiting peak warming to 1.8°C and then begin the Herculean task of bringing temperatures back down.

Even this revised plan — with the ungainly name “overshoot, peak and decline” — requires an enormous global undertaking without precedent that must be commenced immediately. It starts with reducing carbon dioxide emissions worldwide to net zero by the 2050s and then relies on the future development of carbon removal technologies at scale to bring temperatures back down to the 1.5°C threshold.

The report emphasizes the importance of minimizing the time spent above 1.5°C and limiting the overshoot as much as possible to have any real chance of (i) mitigating the most extreme consequences of climate change; and (ii) bringing temperatures back down to more survivable levels.

Even under its best-case scenario, the report still envisions the world spending decades above 1.5°C and warns that in the event “overshoot, peak and decline” works, civilization will still face lasting and irreversible consequences: “Legacy impacts that do not reverse with temperature—continued sea-level rise, species extinctions, ecosystem regime shifts, permafrost carbon feedbacks and the displacement of communities—mean the post-peak stage inherits the full burden of what preceded it.”

Tina Peters Declines New Elections Job

Tina Peters, the convicted former Colorado county clerk who has been on high-profile victory tour since Gov. Jared Polis commuted her prison sentence, has declined to accept a job offer as an elections official in Shasta County, California, a hotbed of Big Lie enthusiasm.

“She declined the offer because she’s running around the country right now trying to secure the elections,” Clint Curtis, the Shasta County registrar of voters who is himself a longtime election denier, told the LA Times. “Shasta County lost out.”

Bovino Was Under Internal Investigation When He Resigned

Greg Bovino, the flamboyant former Customs and Border Protection commander who became the face of President Trump mass deportation operations in blue cities, was under internal investigation when he resigned in March, according to newly released government emails.

Thanks, Apple

Another tech giant has fallen in line with President Trump’s executive order purporting to rename Lake Ontario:

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