Two months ago, 25-year-old Ilia Chernov beat long odds and convinced an immigration judge to grant him political asylum in the U.S.
Normally, that finding would have been enough for Chernov to obtain legal status and live freely in the U.S. Chernov’s judge told him that he would soon be released.
But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has refused to free Chernov, stranding him in detention.
Continue reading “This Russian Dissident Won Political Asylum. ICE Refuses To Release Him.”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
It’s always the same with Trump. His attacks on his foes usually telegraph not what they’re doing, but what he plans to do himself. So it is with the Deep State.
You have probably seen by now the Trump OPM’s new hiring policy which was unveiled last week. It is a road map for creating a politicized federal workforce – a Deep State, if you will. It is a marked departure from decades of efforts to professionalize federal workers and protect them from raw partisan politics. But it is also a logical next step following the mass purges of federal workers: replace them with loyalists.
Most glaringly problematic in the new policy is the essay-writing requirement for applications for positions at GS-05 and above. One of the four required essays comes with this prompt: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?”
It is a green light for hiring to be done on a politicized basis, as political scientist Don Moynihan notes:
I cannot think of anything like this level of politicization being formally introduced into the hiring process. Under the George W. Bush administration, it was a scandal when appointees in the Justice Department were caught scanning candidate CVs for civil servant positions to try to discern their political leanings. Now they will just ask them to explain how they can serve President Trump’s agenda. Within the space of a generation, backdoor politicization practices went from being a source of shame to a formal policy.
What makes the Trump version of politicization arguably worse is that it’s not pinned to ideology or partisan leanings but to personal loyalty and fealty to him. In that, it is arbitrary, ever changing, and subject to constant re-evaluation.
All of this comes against the backdrop of Trump, with the Roberts Court’s blessing, having already neutered the Merit Systems Protection Board and other mechanisms for protecting federal workers. As Moynihan suggests, Trump in breaking the existing merit system is unleashing vast consequences that will take generations to fix.
“He’s dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he’s also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption. The law is only for his enemies now.”–Paul Rosenzweig, a George Washington University law professor who was a senior homeland security official in the Bush II administration, on President Trump
The Trump DOJ has abruptly dropped the civil lawsuit to force Trump White House official Peter Navarro to turn over to the National Archives his Proton emails from the Trump I presidency.
Greg Rosen, who was the chief of the Capitol Siege Section of the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office, resigned from the Justice Department last week after being demoted by former interim D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin.
Lisa Rubin, on Trump’s one-two punch against the American Bar Association and the Federalist Society:
[I]n an era where fidelity to the whims of Trump is far more important than allegiance to any conservative legal agenda, much less the rule of law, Trump aims to be the sole arbiter of who’s qualified and fit for federal judgeships.
If Trump can reduce or even eliminate both the ABA’s and the Federalist Society’s impact on the judicial selection process, he’ll become the only judge of judges who matters — which is exactly, I would posit, how he wants it.
A Milwaukee man allegedly tried to get a witness in the armed robbery case against him deported so he wouldn’t be able to testify. Seizing on anti-immigrant fervor, the man sent letters in the name of the witness threatening to assassinate President Trump. The witness was arrested, but law enforcement eventually figured out the scheme and have filed new charges against the imposter, but not before DHS Secretary Kristi Noem trumpeted the initial arrest.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of D.C., an 81-year-old Reagan appointee, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from ending hormone therapy and social accommodations for transgender inmates in federal prisons, while the lawsuit proceeds.
In a decision reportedly timed to coincide with Pride month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to strip Harvey Milk’s name from an eponymous naval vessel. The assassinated gay icon was a Navy veteran.
“The Harvey Milk is a John Lewis-class oiler, a group of ships that are to be named after prominent civil rights leaders and activists,” Military.com reports.
Other ships in that class are also being targeted by Hegseth for renaming, CBS News reports. They include the:
Yesterday’s Morning Memo said the National Park Service’s decision to close D.C.’s Dupont Circle event for an upcoming Pride event this month was made on “what is clearly a pretextual basis,” but it’s subsequently been confirmed that the request for the closure came from the D.C. police chief, who reversed her position yesterday. It remains up to the U.S. Park Police, which has jurisdiction over the space, to decide whether to keep it open for the Pride event.
The first eruption from Yellowstone’s Black Diamond Pool captured on video since last summer’s much larger hydrothermal explosion:
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A few quick thoughts on the apparent falling out between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
I don’t have more than speculation on what these two guys are thinking or feeling. But the White House took a big swipe at Musk by canning Musk’s handpicked NASA chief the day after his cringey departure ceremony. That action both took something valuable away from Musk and treated him with a very public disrespect. So while Musk is clearly trying to undo the ocean of brand damage he brought on himself and his companies, I don’t think the White House is playing along and trying to help with that project. I think they’re really trying to show him who’s boss, a classic example of Trumpian dominance politics.
But here’s the thing. Both of these guys have very big weapons each can use against the other. Musk can invest money against the GOP budget bill or GOP incumbents. Meanwhile, Trump can start canceling all those contracts Musk handed out to himself and his friends while he was running DOGE. Neither of those things has happened. Until it does, none of this really seems in earnest. Musk can whine. And it will get some headlines. But I don’t think they really care about his whining.
One additional note apart from this purported feud. Musk isn’t shifting sides here. He’s complaining that the cuts to social programs in the GOP budget aren’t deep enough. He claims this is about growing deficits. But he’s not said anything about the centerpiece high income tax cuts which are the drivers of those deficits. So while it’s probably obvious to most of you reading this, it’s important to note that Musk isn’t in any way switching sides. He’s endorsing a sort of Freedom Caucus position. Musk could create problems for Trump and the bill on that front. But there are limits to how much running room he has there. There’s certainly Republican appetite for more cuts. But I suspect that most Republicans, even those who want more savage spending cuts, know how hard it was to put this together and don’t want to upset this apple cart. The bigger the fight, the better for Democrats. If it happens … But I’m skeptical.
It’s not quite clear what is happening with former Missouri Congressman Billy Long and his associates at the federal Office of Personnel Management, where he has been a senior advisor to the director since March.
Continue reading “Internal Docs Raise Questions About Trump IRS Pick Billy Long’s ‘No-Show Jobs’ And ‘Strange’ Schedule Inside A Powerful Agency”Black-eyed and officially, allegedly on the outskirts of the Trump administration, Elon Musk is saying more about his recently discovered objections to the reconciliation package that passed the House last month and will make sweeping cuts to Medicaid if it makes its way through the Senate.
Continue reading “Man Who Tried To Lawlessly Do Congress’ Job For It Criticizes ‘Pork-Filled’ Bill”Over the weekend, I made the point that all the reanalyzing Democrats are doing is really wasted time and they need to start doing stuff, succeeding at doing stuff in 2025. I want to reiterate another point. I truly cannot imagine a bigger opening than the Trump Republican Party is currently giving to Democrats. A recent CNN poll shows the numbers of Americans who think the government “should do more to solve our country’s problems” as opposed to leaving it to individuals and businesses is higher than it’s been in decades. (There’s probably no better explanation of the deep instability of contemporary American politics than the deep perception of the need for change and deep distrust for anyone’s ability to make that change.) Meanwhile, we are greeted with a daily spectacle of cuts to government programs to pay for handouts to the ultra-rich. And we have just daily pageants of the most predatory and brazen corruption.
Last night, I was reading this Evan Osnos piece in The New Yorker about the sheer openness of the turbocharged corruption which, I think we have to say, is wholly without precedent at any time in American history. Most of the details in the piece are things you’ve probably heard of or mostly heard of. But I recommend reading it. It’s powerful and almost beggars belief how much he’s able to catalogue and organize together from just this last spring.
Continue reading “Trump’s Pageant of Corruption is a Gift to the Democratic Party”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
The remarkable reporting by the NYT that the Trump White House hired a disgruntled Harvard Law student who was also serving as a would-be “whistleblower” in the Justice Department’s investigation of the law review is a little hard to follow, but a quick timeline helps to bring it into better focus.
Briefly, the Trump DOJ “appeared eager,” as the Times put it, to escalate its bogus civil investigation of the Harvard Law Review for allegedly discriminating against white men into a criminal probe with allegations of obstruction of justice. Even though the law review is independent of the university, top DOJ civil rights officials tried to use the investigation to put added pressure on Harvard as part of its broader attack on the school, the NYT reports, relying on previously unreported letters.
Those letters disclosed that the government had a cooperating witness on the law review. The witness is Daniel Wasserman, who is now working under Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy.
Here’s the timeline culled from the NYT piece:
April 25: Wasserman is offered a job at the White House, the same day the conservative Washington Free Beacon publishes a story with the headline: “Exclusive: Internal Documents Reveal Pervasive Pattern of Racial Discrimination at Harvard Law Review”
April 28: The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services announce a civil rights investigation citing the Washington Free Beacon story.
May 13: The first Trump DOJ letter is sent to Harvard regarding the law review allegations.
May 21: In the second letter to Harvard, the Trump DOJ first discloses that Wasserman was providing information to the government and accuses the law review of retaliating against him and ordering him to destroy evidence.
May 22: Wasserman’s first day of work at the White House
May 23: The third Trump DOJ letter is sent to to Harvard regarding the law review.
May 28: Wasserman graduates from Harvard Law School.
A senior administration official told the Times that Wasserman’s hiring was unrelated to the government investigation and that Miller was not involved in hiring him and did not meet him until he started working at the White House.
“Legal experts said it was highly unusual for an administration to give a cooperating witness in an ongoing investigation a White House job.”–the NYT, on the Trump White House’s hiring of Daniel Wasserman
“The Trump administration failed on Monday in its effort to avert a trial next month to determine whether a federal judge should block the government from retaliating against pro-Palestinian students based on speech,” All Rise News reports.
Abrego Garcia: In a new filing opposing the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the case, the lawyers for the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia framed up the stakes starkly: “The Government asks this Court to accept a shocking proposition: that federal officers may snatch residents of this country and deposit them in foreign prisons in admitted violation of federal law, while no court in the United States has jurisdiction to do anything about it.”
South Sudan: In the third country deportations case out of Massachusetts, the Trump administration told the court that the eight detainees who were originally bound for South Sudan remain in Djibouti and that DHS has provided Microsoft Teams, a satellite phone, and a private interview room for the detainees to speak with their attorneys.
Cristian: Two related developments in the Maryland case of the wrongfully deported Cristian:
Greg Sargent interviewed an at times tearful Carol Hui, the woman originally from Hong Kong whose detention by the Trump administration shocked the deep-red Missouri town where she has lived and worked for 20 years.
The Trump administration’s use of state power to target minorities and marginalized groups continues apace, but it’s almost become background noise in the Trump II presidency. A few examples from just the past 24 hours:
The new acting chief of the Trump DOJ’s voting section is Maureen Riordan, who until recently was a lawyer for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, Democracy Docket reports. PILF has been a leading group in the voter fraud bamboozlement movement and has succeeded in purging voter roles, introducing new voter restrictions, and limiting the reach of voting rights laws. Voter suppression luminaries Hans von Spakovsky, J. Christian Adam, and John Eastman either are or have been associated with the group.
Under new FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson, the commission is continuing the bogus right-wing crusade against censorship of conservatives on social media by targeting watchdog groups and other organizations in a new investigation into whether they improperly colluded by coordinating boycotts among advertisers. Among the targeted groups are Media Matters, Ad Fontes Media, and at least a dozen other groups, the NYT reports. The FTC’s letters of inquiry into the internal operations of the groups and their business practices.
In a symbolic but aggressive move, the Pentagon under Donald Trump is preparing to shift Greenland from the jurisdiction of the European Command to U.S. Northern Command.
The former Yale historian, with some reluctance, wades into the public discourse around his decision to leave New Haven for Toronto:
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The Senate is poised to pass the GENIUS Act in the coming weeks. The bill will bestow upon the crypto industry a long-sought blessing: a key form of the digital currency, stablecoins, will now be subject to a bespoke (and notably light-touch) regulatory system created by Congress. With it will come the U.S. government’s stamp of approval. After years spent being dismissed as a haven for money launderers and speculators, the bill is in part a marker that the crypto industry has arrived in Washington.
And yet, there are a few problems.
Continue reading “Some Dems Warn Colleagues: Crypto Bill Could Inject Some 19th Century Chaos Into US Economy”Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it didn’t take too kindly to the immigration policies of hundreds of municipalities across the country. It posted a list of “sanctuary cities,” jurisdictions that allegedly limit information-sharing and other forms of cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Unfortunately for the administration, the list, off the bat, sparked more confusion than fear. Several locations were in deeply Republican areas; some local officials disputed that they could meet any reasonable definition of “sanctuary city.”
But the death blow to the list came over the weekend, when the National Sheriffs’ Association put out a jeremiad demanding that the list be removed and that Secretary Kristi Noem issue “an apology to the Sheriffs and the American people.”
The sheriffs knew how to ensure that the issue hit close to home for for the DHS secretary. Sure, the list “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement.” But let’s be serious about what really matters: “DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country,” the statement reads.
By Sunday, the list was no longer active. Noem does not appear to have issued an apology. She did tell Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that “some of the cities have pushed back” after Bartiromo asked why she could not see the list anymore.
— Josh Kovensky
We have been covering the ways in which the cuts to Medicaid included in the House-passed reconciliation package would kick millions off their health care coverage, leaving many completely uninsured.
Many of the changes House Republicans shoved into the bill directly target the Medicaid expansion population — the group that received eligibility for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.
Despite Republicans’ well-worn rhetoric around addressing “waste, fraud and abuse,” the changes add up to a back handed GOP effort to repeal Obamacare as we know it — a goal congressional Republicans loudly tried and failed at dozens of times before, including during the first Trump administration. Since then, the repeal efforts have been more quiet, and even though House Republicans are not saying they are repealing the ACA, the cuts they are implementing will deal a substantial blow to it.
The Congressional Budget Office is estimating that if the House bill becomes law, 7.6 million fewer people would be enrolled in Medicaid and 3.1 million fewer would be enrolled in plans offered on the Obamacare marketplaces in the next decade.
At the same time, private insurers and state officials are warning of chaos in the insurance markets due to changes and Medicaid cuts included in the House GOP bill, according to Politico.
The changes could lead to higher premiums for people who shop for coverage in the marketplaces, and leave brokers and state officials with very little time between when the law could be enacted and when open enrollment starts in fall to adapt to the new regime.
— Emine Yücel
Also in Noem-related news, a victory for the Secretary of Homeland Security.
A candidate with the MAGA stamp of approval, right-wing historian Karol Nawrocki, narrowly won a runoff in Poland’s presidential election Sunday. Noem had visited Poland last month for the country’s first CPAC and endorsed Nawrocki, a highly unusual move for a Cabinet official. (Noted 2020 election-theft co-architect John Eastman also spoke at the event.)
The Polish president doesn’t have many powers, but can veto legislation, setting him up to impede the agenda of the more pro-Europe and pro-Ukraine Prime Minister, Donald Tusk.
— John Light
Pro-Trump Candidate Wins Poland’s Presidential Election—A Bad Omen For The EU, Ukraine And Women
Appeals Court Tries To Get To The Bottom Of A 4th Wrongful Deportation
Democrats’ Hamlet Moment Isn’t the Start of a Solution But the Heart of the Problem
The Law Firms That Appeased Trump—and Angered Their Clients — Erin Mulvaney, Emily Glazer, C. Ryan Barber, Josh Dawsey, the Wall Street Journal
Exclusive: US veterans agency orders scientists not to publish in journals without clearance — Aaron Glantz
A 23-Year-Old Crypto Bro Is Now Vetoing NSF Grants While Staring At His Water Bottle — TechDirt, Mike Masnick
A few days back, I got an email from TPM Reader JL asking me not to give in to the Luddite or reflexively anti-AI tendency he sensed I might have. It was a very interesting note and led to an interesting exchange, because JL is far from an AI maximalist or promoter and our views ended up not being that far apart. I explained at greater length that my general skepticism toward AI is based on four interrelated points.
The first is that even very positive technological revolutions (say, the Industrial Revolution) end up hurting a lot of people. Second, this revolution is coming to us under the guidance and ownership of tech billionaires who are increasingly wedded to and driven by predatory and illiberal ideologies. Both those facts make me think that we should approach every new AI development from a posture of skepticism, even if some or most may end up being positive. Trust but verify and all that. Point three is closely related to point two: AI is being built, even more than most of us realize, by consuming everyone else’s creative work with no compensation. It’s less “thought” than more and more refined statistical associations between different words and word patterns. And that’s to build products that will be privately owned and sold back to us. Again, predatory and illiberal … in important ways likely illegal.
Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence and The Posture of Skepticism”
