A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
New Frontiers in Jan. 6 Revisionism
The “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is just a part of the broader rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, the pace of which seems to be accelerating ahead of the midterms.
Among the things that make the $1.776 billion reparation so toxic is that it builds off the Big Lie fantasy that the Jan. 6 defendants are victims to create a slush fund to perpetuate the Trump regime. It’s a bank shot that requires such epic gall that even GOP senators, who’ve shown themselves willing and able to swallow whatever Trump asks them to, are balking over it.
“One of the roughest meetings I’ve seen in my entire time in the Senate,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R) said in describing GOP senators’ meeting last week with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Fiery does not begin to cut it,” said Cruz, who noted that some senators were screaming at Blanche.
Since senators left town for the holiday without resolving the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” here’s what happened:
- Late Friday, the Trump DOJ moved to dismiss the seditious conspiracy indictments against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. “[E]ver since Mr. Trump began his second term by granting clemency to all of the defendants, the department has taken steps to unwind almost every aspect of its enormous effort to hold the rioters accountable for disrupting the peaceful transfer of presidential power after the 2020 election,” Alan Feuer writes in the NYT.
- The Trump DOJ has loudly and proudly scrubbed its website of official press releases about the criminal charges, convictions, and sentencings of the Jan. 6 rioters. “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration,” DOJ posted on X. “We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”
- In a failed effort to institute a national system of hand-counted paper ballots, the Trump White House’s dubious election-security czar, Kurt Olsen, last year sought to ban Dominion voting machines used in more than half of the states by asking whether the Commerce Department could declare their components national security risks, Reuters reports.
We Are Conscripts in Jan. 6 Revisionism
The American people are being compelled to fund—and by funding to implicitly endorse—a bounty for the people who stormed the Capitol, beat police officers, and tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power. All of us are, in effect, being conscripted into Trump’s campaign to rewrite the history of January 6th. The message the fund sends—that the rioters were victims, that their convictions were injustices, that the government owes them not accountability but a check—is sent in all of our names, with all of our money. We are being made, without our consent, co-signatories to the biggest lie of Trump’s presidency.
Abrego Garcia Criminal Case Dismissed
A federal judge in Nashville ruled Friday that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was the victim of vindictive prosecution by the Trump DOJ and dismissed the criminal case against him.
The ruling came after a day-long evidentiary hearing in February where the DOJ had a chance to prove the prosecution was legitimate. U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. was unmoved by the government’s presentation. “The evidence before this Court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” Crenshaw wrote in his ruling.
Mass Deportation Watch
- New Jersey: ICE agents pepper-sprayed protesters and Sen. Andy Kim (D) in a clash Monday outside Delaney Hall in Newark.
- Minnesota: Radley Balko goes deep on the new state criminal charges against an ICE officer in the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis — and the extensive and systematic lying about the incident by the Trump administration.
- Colorado: State law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that DHS social media posts recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept.
Stat of the Day
The Telegraph: “All but three of the 6,069 refugees taken in by the United States since October are White South Africans, according to state department statistics.”
The Great Whitening
- Alabama: Despite the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, a three-judge panel this morning blocked Alabama from using a congressional district map that it found intentionally discriminates against Black voters. It’s a result that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had urged in her May 11 dissent when the Supreme Court sent the Alabama case back down, arguing that while the high court had decimated the Voting Rights Act, the lower court’s decision on the 14th Amendment violation was untouched: “Nothing in the District Court’s Fourteenth Amendment analysis is affected by this Court’s opinion in Callais.”
- Maryland: Bill Ferguson, the Democratic leader of Maryland Senate who single-handedly blocked Gov. Wes Moore (D) from implementing a redistricting plan for the midterms that would have eliminated the state’s sole GOP seat, is now prepared to proceed … in time for 2028. Moore is still pushing to do it in time for the midterms.
Quote of the Day
“Callais is well on its way to becoming the Dred Scott of our time, a decision so reviled by civic society that it marks a before and after in our constitutional democracy. And like Dred Scott, which denied Black citizenship, and other anti-canons that live in infamy, the ruling will be remembered less for its full caption or precise legal holding than by the harm it caused Black and marginalized people, our body politic, and the idea of these United States.”—Cristian Farias
7 Signs of a Personalist Regime
Don Moynihan with an indispensable list:
1. The leader is everywhere
2. The rule of law is secondary to the leader’s whims
3. The inner circle has free rein to pillage
4. The routine debasement of other public leaders
5. Presidential vibes, not facts, determine our new reality
6. Conspiratorial ravings become a loyalty test
7. Only loyalists need apply
Democracy Dies in HR
Drawing on the new book on Argentina’s Dirty War by two German political scientists, “Making a Career in Dictatorship,” Amanda Taub writes: “It turns out that would-be authoritarians don’t need to staff their regimes with ideological true believers, offer extreme enticements or impose draconian punishments in order to make successful power grabs. They just need to figure out how to target their ideal labor pool: the frustrated and mediocre.”
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Almost afternoon memo.
Today’s Heather & Paul:
It’s so late. I have to walk before it gets hot