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

The Biggest News Of The Week

In a tumultuous week that marked four months since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, nothing will have as long-lasting and damaging an effect on American democracy as the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to upend 90 years of its own precedent and strip independent agencies of their independence.

The high court’s six-justice conservative majority fundamentally altered the structural balance of power among the branches of the federal government. It handed vast new power to the White House to put politics above expertise, partisanship above reason, and power over principle.

All of that would have been bad enough at any other time, but the Roberts Court just handed a match to a confirmed arsonist in Donald Trump. As bad as the first four months of his second term have been, it was not enough to dislodge the conservative justices from their ideological attachment to the radical theory of a unitary executive.

The immediate result of their decision will be to enable and encourage Trump’s rampage across federal government to bring it to heel to his whims in dramatic and disturbing ways. But it also tilts the playing field of American politics in profound but often imperceptible ways that will persist for decades.

One wonders how independent agencies will even function. They were created and have existed over the course of nearly a century under a certain set of assumptions about the importance of experts, consistency in policy-making, and insulation from partisan politics. What is their use or reason for being now if they’re merely appendages of the White House doing its bidding?

The Damage Is Long Term And Lasting

Political scientist Don Moynihan makes an insightful point about the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision:

With unitary executive theory, Congress cannot write robust new legislation that modernizes the civil service and stops politicization. A President could just ignore it. Even if Trump leaves office, and a new President looks to restore nonpartisan competence, their promises are only good for four or eight years before another President can come in and rip up the terms of their employment. And over time, why would even a good government President invest effort in restoring capacity if their successor can undermine it?

With unitary executive theory, the public sector becomes permanently viewed as an unstable and chaotic workplace that we are seeing now. The most capable potential employees decide its not worth the bother, and the workforce becomes a mix of people who cannot get a job elsewhere, and short term political appointees.

SCOTUS’ Special Carveout For The Fed

Last month, Todd Phillips warned of the intellectual dishonesty afoot if the Supreme Court did what it ultimately did do yesterday in overturning its Humphrey’s Executor precedent while carving out a special exception for the Federal Reserve: “In short, there is simply no principled way of ensuring the Fed’s removal protections stand while striking down those of all other agencies.”

Mixed Bag On Stopping The Trump Rampage

• Department of Education: In a new ruling, U.S. District Judge Myong Joun of Massachusetts blocked massive layoffs at the department, concluding that they were a poorly camouflaged attempt by the Trump administration to unlawfully dismantle it.
• Voice of America: The Trump administration’s silencing of the government broadcaster can continue after the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a stay pending appeal to remain in place.
• Gov’t-wide: Judge Susan Illston of San Francisco extended her order blocking mass layoffs across 22 government agencies and reining in Trump administration efforts to dismantle some offices.

Higher Ed Attacks: Ivy League Edition

• Harvard: Harvard quickly filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration Friday morning challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s revocation yesterday of the school’s certification for admitting foreign students. “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” DHS announced (the emphasis is in the original).
• Nationwide: U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of Oakland issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from revoking the legal status of foreign students en masse.
• Columbia: A trumped-up investigation by the Department of Health and Human Services accuses the school of violating civil rights law by “acting with deliberate indifference” toward harassment against Jewish students.

Something Has To Change

As the Trump administration weaponizes the government’s investigative powers to target perceived political foes and people it doesn’t like or agree with, editors and reporters can’t continue to frame coverage of those investigations in the same way they always have. A couple of sample headlines from today:

• NYT: Regulators Are Investigating Whether Media Matters Colluded With Advertisers
• WSJ: Columbia Violated Students’ Civil Rights, Government Investigation Finds

Those framings only lend legitimacy to what is a dramatic departure from the legal and ethical strictures that bound government investigations in the past. Even in better times, journalists were often too deferential in their framing of investigations in ways that mirrored what prosecutors and law enforcement alleged. In the Trump era, the fact of the investigation is often more important than what it purports to investigate or uncover. The old ways of covering government investigation simply can’t persist in these new conditions.

Understanding The FDA’s Shift On COVID Vaccines

Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina on the Trump FDA’s decision to erect new hurdles for COVID vaccines for healthy people under the age of 65:

On the surface, this sounds reasonable. After all, severe Covid-19 is far less common in healthy young people. Given growing immunity, real scientific questions exist about whether annual boosters are still warranted for everyone. And, yes, other countries do things differently.

But beneath the surface, this move is deeply troubling. It bypasses the scientific systems built to answer these questions, replacing the public process in health policy with the opinions of two political appointees with chips on their shoulders.

Trump Confirms South Sudan Flight

President Trump confirmed in a social media post that the deportation flight to South Sudan, which has been the focal point of an intense legal battle in federal court in Massachusetts this week, is parked in Djibouti.

BREAKING …

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay in the Alien Enemies Act case out of Houston, where U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison had issued a strongly worded order for the Trump administration to produce before midnight tonight detailed information about a Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador and not heard from since.

A Critical And Deeply Dark Dynamic

A good analysis from Politico of how the Trump White House views losing in court on its lawless anti-immigration actions as still a win politically.

Just Another Normal Day In America

The Secretary of Homeland Security responds to the voluntary dismissal of an immigration lawsuit: "Suck it."

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— Brad Heath (@bradheath.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 8:09 PM

Brilliant

Reuters: “A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.”

Have A Good Weekend If You Can

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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.

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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