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

An Essential Prism For Our Time

Before jumping into the day’s news, I want to elevate another prism through which to examine the Trump II presidency: white Christian nationalism.

By now I’m sure it’s obvious that Morning Memo is mostly structured around tracking the erosion of the rule of law as a singular threat to democracy. I’ve also offered narrower frameworks – like the trifecta of retribution, destruction, corruption – to help you organize in your own mind the depredations of the Trump II presidency.

But I have this persistent feeling that while the rule of law prism is plenty broad enough to include the anti-DEI and anti-trans rampages, sustained attacks on voting rights, anti-immigration policy except for white South Africans, performative white aggrievement, anti-semitism masquerading as anti-anti-semitism, and a host of other Trump II initiatives, I need to be more explicit about the white Christian nationalism suffused throughout the last four months.

Perhaps for now it is enough just to say it out loud and offer it as a lens through which to view today’s particularly pungent array of news. You might also find it useful to train that lens backwards for additional clarity on what we’ve been living through since January.

Trump Administration ‘Unquestionably’ Violated Court Order

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of Boston spent most of the day trying to unwind the Trump administration’s South Sudan gambit, a brazen violation of his order imposing strict conditions on third country deportations

I could write at length about the various elements of the case, but let me boil it down as succinctly as I can: Murphy found that the Department of Homeland Security “unquestionably” violated his order, but he set aside for now the question of punishment for contempt of court to focus on what to do about the ghost flight of eight migrants with alleged criminal convictions that was reportedly originally headed to South Sudan. Here’s where he landed:

• Over objections from the migrants’ counsel, Murphy ordered that deportees would remain abroad somewhere in U.S. custody and be given all of the due process remotely that they had been entitled to receive before their unlawful removals.
• Murphy “clarified” his preliminary injunction so that the Trump administration could not feign confusion again about what it said.
• Murphy ordered the Trump administration to provide by the end of the day today a declaration addressing a news report that South Sudan says any foreign migrants it receives from the United States will simply be “re-deported to their correct country.” That kind of workaround is illegal under U.S. law.
• Murphy gave the Trump DOJ a deadline to provide proof that it had notified all the necessary government components of his order and of the risk of contempt of court if it were violated again.

Murphy didn’t tip his hand as to punishment for the violation, but it comes against a backdrop of what he referred to at one point as an “overwhelming series of errors in this case in its short existence.”

That remark came as Murphy was wrangling with the implications of DHS having provided him with false-and-now-retracted information about the related case of a gay deportee, who fears persecution and goes by the initials O.C.G. (but was not aboard in the South Sudan flight). “This is a really big deal. It’s a big deal to lie to a court under oath. … I could not take this more seriously,” Judge Murphy admonished.

If you were looking for harsh sanctions against Trump administration officials for defying the courts, you came away disappointed. I get it. I also think the leash the courts are giving the administration has shortened dramatically, and each subsequent judge that comes to these cases, having seen what their judicial colleagues have dealt with, are exhibiting less credulity. But it’s a slow, grinding process.

Federal Judge In Texas Drops The Hammer In AEA Case

The Alien Enemies Act case in Houston is one example of a judge who is coming in later to the Trump immigration cases sidestepping some of the initial nonsense and cutting straight to the heart of the case. They’ve seen the stonewalling in the Abrego Garcia and Cristian cases out of Maryland. They’ve seen even the Roberts Court lose patience with the chronic due process violations. So the later cases are poised to move more quickly.

In the Houston case, U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison on Monday gave the Trump administration 24 hours to file a declaration confirming the location and condition of
a Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15. Yesterday Ellison found the government’s declaration wholly inadequate:

Defendants’ declaration provided no meaningful information regarding Plaintiff Agelviz-Sanguino’s location, health, or the legal basis for his detention. The U.S. Embassy’s purported inquiry to El Salvadoran authorities—unsupported by details or evidence—does not satisfy the Court’s previous order.

Ellison, a 75-year-old Clinton appointee, issued a new order demanding a laundry list of specific details from the Trump administration about its handling of this case and the AEA deportations more broadly.

Expect this case to make its way rapidly to a hostile 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is already under strict orders from the Roberts Court on how to handle AEA cases.

MUST READ

Relying on internal documents, the NYT goes deep inside the Trump administration’s handling of the case of the mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia:

In the days before the government’s error became public, D.H.S. officials discussed trying to portray Mr. Abrego Garcia as a “leader” of the violent street gang MS-13, even though they could find no evidence to support the claim. They considered ways to nullify the original order that barred his deportation to El Salvador. They sought to downplay the danger he might face in one of that country’s most notorious prisons.

Trump’s New Mass Deportation Gambit

It appears that the Trump administration is dismissing pending immigration cases on a wholesale basis as a way of sidestepping immigration courts. By dismissing the cases, the administration can arrest migrants on the spot in court and put them on a faster track to deportation.

Judge Thwacks Trump DOJ Over Newark Mayor Case

A federal magistrate judge savaged the Trump DOJ for its “embarrassing retraction of charges” against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who had been arrested at a controversial ICE detention center in his city.

“An arrest of a public figure is not a preliminary investigative tool. It is a severe action,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Andre M. Espinosa told the DOJ prosecutor. “It should only be undertaken after a thorough, dispassionate investigation of credible evidence.”

Interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba had announced the charges would be dropped the same day she announced charges against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) arising from the same incident. Baraka and McIver are both Black.

Trump DOJ Abandons Police Oversight

The Justice Department moved to drop civil rights cases against the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville that had arisen from two of the highest profile police killings of the past decade: George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Both cases had been resolved with consent decrees which the Trump DOJ is now abandoning.

‘Secretary of Defense Christian Prayer & Worship Service’

Pete Hegseth led a Christian prayer service at the Pentagon yesterday, during which his own pastor praised President Trump as “sovereignly appointed” by God, the NYT reports.

Another Bonkers Oval Office Ambush

In a now-familiar Oval Office set piece, President Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of genocide against white Afrikaners, played him a propaganda video, and held up a photo of violence from another country. All while America’s most notorious South African migrant, Elon Musk, was standing by in person. “Trump Casts Himself as a Protector of Persecuted White People” was an apt headline for the day and the historic moment:

Trump is now giving the South African president the full Zelenskyy treatment

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 21, 2025 at 12:53 PM

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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.

‘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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