NSPM-7 Becomes Operationalized
In the days after Charlie Kirk was killed last year, the political right sought to seize the moment for its advantage. The White House rolled out a suite of directives, including National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7. That document audaciously called for prosecutors to scrutinize a sweeping array of vaguely left-wing ideas, including “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” incredibly common sentiments that the memo nonetheless cast as contributing to violent activity and the “‘anti-fascist’ lie” that “has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists.”
TPM broke the news yesterday that, as of March, the memo has been operationalized by the Justice Department through a team called Joint Task Force Vanguard. The task force has already been involved in multiple prosecutions, including of Minneapolis-area activists earlier this month, and is led by two prosecutors with experience tackling gangs and terrorism cases who report directly to acting attorney general Todd Blanche.
The prosecutors’ experience “means that they’re looking at group criminality, conspiracy, racketeering, and what that means is that they’re going after tough charges,” Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor who is now a professor at Georgetown Law School, told reporter Josh Kovensky, who broke the story. “To the extent that that makes sense for the mafia or for violent street gangs, it makes less sense for political protesters.”
One of the two prosecutors leading the task force has also dabbled in right-wing blogging, opining during the early days of COVID, for example, that “the media will stop at nothing to prevent President Trump’s re-election in 2020, even if that means financial ruin for a sizable portion of the American population.”
Bill Pulte’s Ominous Choice for Chief of Staff
How far will the acting Director of National Intelligence go to meddle in the midterms? Its one of the big questions surrounding the president’s decision to install as acting DNI Bill Pulte, a construction industry scion who, as a housing official in the second Trump administration, made a name for himself leveling baseless allegations about mortgages at the president’s perceived enemies. The outgoing DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, of course, turned up at the FBI raid of Fulton County, providing an indication that the president hoped to use the job for something other than its intended role.
We got one possible indication Pulte will be picking up where Gabbard left off in recent days, when the New York Times broke the news that Christina Norton, a former Republican National Committee official who has also worked with Pulte at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, will serve as chief of staff at DNI. Norton oversaw a GOP poll watcher program in 2024 that, among other things, brought Jack Posobiec, the conservative influencer who rose to prominence as a promoter of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, to speak to a group of volunteers; she also, in that job, spoke at an event organized by other right-wing conspiracy theorists.
“We recruited and trained over 230,000 poll watchers and poll workers across 18 battleground states,” she said in remarks posted to her Instagram account and later deleted, but reported yesterday by investigative journalist Mike Isikoff. “That meant for the first time in history, a Republican was standing guard to ensure the law was followed in every single precinct and mail ballot center in every major city across every battleground.”
Man of the Hour
It’s John Yoo, the conservative law professor known for authoring memos supporting some of the George W. Bush administration’s most dramatic excesses. Politico reported yesterday that he’ll bring his grand vision of executive power to a role “as a consultant” on Joe diGenova’s DOJ probe of a supposed grand conspiracy by Trump’s enemies to tie him to Russia in his first term.
Coming Up
The Supreme Court will issue its final opinions of the term, including on birthright citizenship, at 10 a.m. ET. Join us for coverage of that.
Colorado holds its primary today. Josh Marshall offers some thoughts on the Democratic contests.
Tabs
Rep. Tom Kean (R-NJ) is going to address his mysterious months-long absence in a speech today.
Alan Dershowitz has failed in a bizarre attempt to get the Supreme Court to throw out the Times v. Sullivan standard for defamation claims. Tossing it would have made news outlets far more vulnerable to lawsuits from the rich, the powerful, and the annoying.
Some good news
Readers wrote in in response to my call for feedback yesterday asking that I make a point of including small victories in the fight to maintain democracy — good news, in other words — here. I’ll do that.
Here’s one: The Trump administration has lost, again, in its effort to obtain states’ voting rolls. This time in New Hampshire.
Send me your thoughts on this nascent morning thing I’m doing. (Also, if you’re not a TPM member but got to the bottom of this post, you absolutely should become a member! We need those memberships to keep doing what we do.)
No one does more to discredit the reputation of the US, capitalism, or Christianity more than Republicans in general and Trump/MAGA in particular. The worst news for any cause or idea is to hear that Trump has endorsed it, because ETTD.
Good news is a great idea. Keep it in!
Another good news: Supreme Court refuses to take up the original case against CF and his assault on E.Jean Carroll stands.
Something’s happening with the Putin family. Putin’s #2 yacht, the Graceful, was spotted in Danish waters and has now turned on its Automatic Identification transponder, which has been off since 2022. Most likely Alina Kabaeva, and possibly her two unofficial boys, Ivan and Vladimir Jr. Czar Nicholas II was not so lucky in 1918, but many Romanoffs made it out of Russia, most heading for France. The czar’s mom, who was Danish, also was rescued from Crimea. That’s the thing, when an autocrat goes down, there’s not much to protect his close circles. Maybe Kabaeva will ultimately land in Turkey, Monaco or Switzerland.
Is this replacing the Morning Memo?
“Dramatic excesses,” you say. Like justifying the use of torture, which by the way is still illegal according the Uniform Code of Military Justice (even if you call it “enhanced interrogation”)?