A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

‘This Seems Like It May Be Contempt’

Morning Memo has been carefully tracking where the constitutional clash between President Trump and the judicial branch is most likely to reach its apex first. There’s a new leader in the clubhouse.

In what has been mostly a second-tier immigration case because it doesn’t involve the Alien Enemies Act, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of Boston has been trying to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to third countries without notice or a chance to raise concerns about their safety.

But that case has morphed into what is increasingly looking like a constitutional showdown, with Murphy holding an emergency hearing last night after evidence emerged that as many as a dozen migrants were flown yesterday to South Sudan without notice or hearing, in apparent violation of Murphy’s temporary order.

“Based on what I have been told, this seems like it may be contempt,” Murphy said, according to the NYT, one of the few news outlets able to cover last night’s emergency hearing.

During the hearing, the Trump administration lawyers either didn’t know or refused to divulge key information to Murphy, claiming the details of the removals – including the status of the plane and its ultimate destination – were classified.

One key but unverified piece of information emerged in the hearing, which Murphy recessed a couple of times for the Trump administration lawyers to try to obtain more details. As to one particular migrant whose initials are N.M. and is from Myanmar, a Trump DOJ lawyer said he was returned home to Myanmar, not South Sudan, the NYT reports. That contradicts the notice that N.M.’s lawyers say they were given by ICE. Sending him back to his home country probably would not violate Murphy’s existing order.

To buy time, Murphy ordered the Trump administration “to maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

Ahead of another hearing in the matter set for 11 a.m. ET today, Murphy directed the government to be prepared to provide specific information about these removals. As for N.M, Murphy zeroed in on even more specific information, including which government officials were involved: “Defendants must nonetheless be prepared to address the details of his removal, including when and to where he was removed, the names of individuals personally involved in executing his removal, and any information currently in Defendants’ possession regarding his current whereabouts.”

This is the same case Morning Memo told you about Monday, which has already had a number of examples of egregious Trump administration conduct:

• In one aspect of the case involving a gay Guatemalan man deported to Mexico, the Trump DOJ canceled a deposition of a government official at the last minute and filed a notice of error that it didn’t have evidence it had previously claimed in court to have – and in the notice outed the man by name.
• Judge Murphy was forced to issue a clarification to head off the Trump administration from deporting a group of migrants – including N.M. above – to Libya.
• Judge Murphy has already ordered discovery into whether the Trump administration violated his order by flying Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo before removing them to El Salvador. The Trump administration said it wasn’t a violation of the order because the flights were conducted by the Defense Department, not the Department of Homeland Security.

DNI Weaponization: Cooking The Books On Intel

New emails obtained by the NYT erase any doubt that DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s chief of staff Joe Kent was doing political damage control when he ordered the intel officials to redo its analysis that contradicted President Trump’s claims about Tren de Aragua:

“We need to do some rewriting” and more analytic work “so this document is not used against the DNI or POTUS,” Joe Kent, the chief of staff to Ms. Gabbard, wrote in an email to a group of intelligence officials on April 3, using shorthand for Ms. Gabbard’s position and for the president of the United States.

Ho Continues To Audition For SCOTUS Nom

Judge James Ho of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has been ostentatiously auditioning for any empty seat on the Supreme Court that President Trump might get to fill, but his latest tour de force exceeds even his most obsequious previous efforts.

Ho took the comical step of tacking on a seven-page concurrence to an ordinary two-paragraph scheduling order in which he raked the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Roberts in particular. The Ho rant was prompted by the Supreme Court’s decision last week in an Alien Enemies Act case that vacated an earlier 5th Circuit order and remanded the case to it with very specific instructions on how to handle it.

Ho took a potshot at Roberts’ recent public remarks that it was part of the judiciary’s role to “check the excesses of Congress or the executive.”

“It is not the role of the judiciary to check the excesses of the other branches, any more than it’s our role to check the excesses of any other American citizen.” Ho wrote. “Judges do not roam the countryside looking for opportunities to chastise government officials for their mistakes.”

But the thrust of Ho’s concurrence was lamenting the disrespect the Supreme Court has shown President Trump, and in service of that argument he took additional shots at Presidents Clinton and Obama while provocatively suggesting that the alleged members of
Tren de Aragua are “favored litigants” getting “special treatment.”

Inside Kristi Noem’s Polygraph Operation

WSJ:

Polygraph exams have long been a routine tool used inside intelligence agencies, including DHS, as part of security clearances, job applications and certain investigations. But under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s direction, they have been used to search for leaks of information that Noem and her top deputies consider disloyal or embarrassing, according to current and former officials familiar with the practice. The information the employees are accused of leaking often isn’t classified, the people said.

Let The Record Show …

HASSAN: What is habeas corpus? NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country HASSAN: That's incorrect

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 20, 2025 at 10:16 AM

DOJ Weaponization: A Story In Three Parts

• Cuomo: After abandoning the prosecution of NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) by improbably claiming it was “election interference,” the Trump DOJ is now investigating his leading rival for the office: former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), the NYT reports. The inquiry was reportedly begun a month ago under then-interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin in response to an old referral from House Republicans, who accused Cuomo of lying in congressional testimony about his response as governor to the COVID pandemic.
• McIver: In politically charged cases, prosecutors will often use a grand jury to provide an extra layer of accountability. Not so in interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s criminal case against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ). The charging documents – a bare criminal complaint on an affidavit from DHS special agent – were finally unveiled yesterday morning, after Habba and a top DOJ official had touted them for more than 12 hours on social media. Habba may still secure a grand jury indictment, but the President’s former personal lawyer and White House adviser has handled this case in a maximally politicized way.
• Police brutality: Los Angeles interim U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli’s attempt to disregard a jury verdict of guilty in an excessive force case against sheriff’s deputy Trevor Kirk ran headlong into a skeptical federal judge this week, Meghann Cuniff reports. “The government hasn’t addressed, at least from my reading of the pleadings, any issue of public interest,” U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson said. Essayli is trying to enter into a post-trial plea agreement that would reduce the felony jury conviction against Kirk to a misdemeanor.

Ed Martin: Weaponization Czar

Timothy Snyder takes on a TPM fave:

Martin, to use the historical term, is taking an ostentatious part in the ongoing attempt at what the Nazis called a Gleichschaltung of institutions: of dropping the distinction between the law and the leader, and of attempting to force everyone in public life into line with the leader’s latest statements. The reference is not accidental. Martin is on the far right, and an advocate of great replacement theory: the spurious idea that a conspiracy seeks to replace white Americans with immigrants. He had a very supportive relationship with a known American Nazi. …

The title “weaponization czar” is appropriate because Martin’s most interesting achievements thus far are, in fact, in the service of Russia. He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as “weaponization czar” is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians.

First At TPM: EEOC Goes All Trumpy

The Trump-appointed acting chair of the EEOC has directed staff to focus on “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights,” TPM reports.

The Destruction: COVID Vaccines Edition

In a major shift, the newly Trumpified FDA is requiring new clinical trials before approving annual COVID vaccines for otherwise healthy people under the age of 65.

Already Too Late

A new study finds that even if global temperatures remain below the 1.5C threshold (a level we’re practically assured of exceeding), the polar icecaps will continue to rapidly melt, leading to sea level rise that will be catastrophic to coastal communities around the world.

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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Another Crossing The Rubicon Moment

Let’s quickly run through the many telling and odd aspects of the still-unseen criminal case against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) for an alleged incident that took place while conducting her constitutional oversight duties:

• Still no charging documents publicly available this morning as we go to press.
• That didn’t stop top Trump DOJ officials from touting the charges. Acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba of New Jersey posted a statement on X, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche weighed in, too.
• For those of us who anticipated politically motivated criminal charges against Democratic members of Congress in a white-nationalism-infused Trump II presidency, the fact that the first member charged is a Black woman resonates on several levels.
• While it’s hard to assess the charges without any charging documents, the muddied and conflicting accounts of what happened at the ICE detention center in Newark would typically be enough by itself to eschew criminal charges. Not always, but often, and especially when the case bumps up hard against constitutional separation of powers concerns.
• Habba’s simultaneous decision to drop a criminal trespass charge against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arising out of the same incident “for the sake of moving forward” is not a reason I’ve ever heard a federal prosecutor give for withdrawing charges.

Criminally charging opposition political leaders at the same time you are dismantling the infrastructure for pursuing public corruption cases is an authoritarian one-two punch. So is this bit of gaslighting from Blanche: “[A]ssaults on federal law enforcement will not be tolerated. This Administration will always protect those who work tirelessly to keep America safe.” Contrast that with this next item.

Price Tag On Babbitt Settlement: $5M

The Trump DOJ’s tentative settlement of the wrongful death lawsuit brought by the estate of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she was storming the Capitol, reportedly calls for a $5 million payment to Babbitt’s family.

Reacting to the news, outgoing Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said: “This settlement sends a chilling message to law enforcement nationwide, especially to those with a protective mission like ours.”

The Corruption: DOJ Weaponization Edition

A sampling of some of the worst and most bizarre transgressions of the past 24 hours:

• With President Trump running the Justice Department out of the White House, he called for a “major investigation” into spurious allegations he invented that Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono violated campaign finance laws in how they supported Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
• Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell bizarrely called the art center’s deferred maintenance and its financial deficit “criminal” and said he was referring the mundanities of arts administration to the D.C. U.S. attorney.
• The Trump DOJ is launching a new unit to make unprecedented use of the False Claims Act to target university DEI programs. While it would mostly pursue civil claims, DAG Todd Blanche went as far as threatening criminal prosecution in some instances.
• The Trump DOJ’s Civil Rights Division opened an investigation into the city of Chicago for hiring Black people. I’m not sure how else to put it.

Trump’s Message: Do My Bidding And You’ll Be Rewarded

The controversial Emil Bove III, who was a criminal defense attorney for President Trump before being named a top Justice Department official, is on the short list for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The End Of CBS News As We Knew It

Paramount’s determination to bend the knee to President Trump by settling his bogus lawsuit against 60 Minutes has cost CBS News President Wendy McMahon her job.

Quote Of The Day

Of course a president openly filling his pockets with direct (albeit thinly veiled) payoffs from people with business before the government is an attack on the republic. Of course the president pardoning political allies for crimes is an attack on the republic. Of course disappearing people off the streets and sending them to foreign prison camps is an attack on the republic. Of course violating basic constitutional rules about spending government money; defying court orders; denying habeas rights; intimidating media outlets and universities and law firms; and on and on are all attacks on the republic.

–Jonathan Bernstein

4th Circuit Upholds ‘Facilitate’ Order In AEA Case

In an important Alien Enemies Act case, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stay a lower court order that the Trump administration “facilitate” the return of a Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador in violation of an existing court-approved settlement agreement, TPM first reported.

Another ‘Facilitate’ Case Pops Up In Texas

In a new order, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison of Houston gave the Trump administration 24 hours to (i) confirm the location and condition of a Venezuelan man believed to have been removed to El Salvador on March 15; and (ii) to explain the “legal basis for his continued detention.”

Anticipating resistance from the Trump administration, Ellison also imposed several other important conditions on the government if it claims “an inability to facilitate communication due to lack of control over El Salvadoran facilities.”

In Other Alien Enemies Act News …

• U.S. District Judge John Holcomb has blocked removals under the AEA in the Central District of California.
• Jason Willick reminds us of the Trump DOJ’s complete about-face on whether AEA detainees are entitled to due process.
• Roger Parloff has another eminently accessible thread, this one on the Supreme Court’s AEA ruling Friday:

A few late notes on SCOTUS’s AARP II ruling. Beyond extending for now the bar against removing aliens from NDTexas under the Alien Enemies Act, it does 3 key things. The biggest, below, is declaring ICE’s current ~24-hr notice policy unconstitutional. … 1/12

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— Roger Parloff (@rparloff.bsky.social) May 19, 2025 at 10:37 AM

House GOP Lurches Toward Vote On Big Bill

With Speaker Mike Johnson gunning to vote this week on President Trump’s centerpiece legislation, the WSJ unpacks in an accessible way what’s in it.

The Purges: Trauma Edition

WaPo: White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working.

IMPORTANT

In one of the few clear examples we’ve had so far of a court stopping President Trump’s effort to dismantle a government agency, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell of D.C. has largely reversed the White House’s attack on the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Trump Folds Bigly On Ukraine After Talking To Putin

President Trump made another remarkable and devastating capitulation to Vladimir Putin that leaves Ukraine twisting in the wind after it spent months trying to accommodate a hostile American president.

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