The Trump administration is genuinely committed to finding as many sources of leverage as possible and using it to coerce various actors — mostly state and local governments but others too — into cooperating with the immigration crackdown.
Continue reading “If You Want Attention, Send In The Troops”Personalization, The Vastly Bigger Story Behind the Pimpmobile Jet Bribe
Just before the onset of the pandemic, I’d started researching a longer project about the personalization of global politics which was accelerated by but not started by Trump. In a way, personalization is the inevitable companion of authoritarianism and autocracy. If there’s one guy who runs the show in each country, then the affairs of that state inherently become indistinguishable from that of the autocrat and his personal checkbook. Relationships between states become those of individual people.
Early in Biden’s presidency, I spoke to one of the very high-end hedge funders who are in the class of people who get invited to the dinners and shindigs with Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh. This was around the time that Jared Kushner got that huge $2 billion investment in his new post-White House fund. This source described one of those dinners to me that had occurred not long before that investment. Kushner was seated to MBS’s right or left. I can’t remember which, but same difference. Given how much power MBS wields and his near unilateral control over hundreds of billions of dollars, people would probably literally kill for that level of preferment and proximity. But as it was conveyed to me, everything about that weekend or series of days suggested that Jared was just MBS’s guy. As in, MBS just loved Jared. And remember, Trump was out of power. And in early 2022 or possibly late 2021, it was by no means an obvious bet that he’d be returning to power. The relationship seemed to go far beyond a bet on the Trump family returning to power.
Continue reading “Personalization, The Vastly Bigger Story Behind the Pimpmobile Jet Bribe”Ed Martin Announces He Will Abuse The Powers Of His Next Office, Too
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Name And Shame!
I don’t recall an outgoing interim U.S. attorney holding a press conference at the end of their brief tenure, but then no one else has been a rolling clown show like Ed Martin. His endless self-promotion, Trump brown-nosing, and flagrant abuse of office sets a standard only his successor Jeanine Pirro could hope to match. Don’t count her out.
In an especially painful example of the Peter principle, the failure of Martin’s nomination to the permanent position as U.S. attorney for D.C. means he’s getting bumped up to Main Justice, where he will be, in his words, the “captain” of the brazenly corrupt “Weaponization Working Group” that Attorney General Pam Bondi has set up on orders from President Trump.
Martin used his press conference as an opportunity to preview his work weaponizing the Justice Department on behalf of Donald Trump:
“There are some really bad actors, some people that did some really bad things to the American people. And if they can be charged, we’ll charge them. But if they can’t be charged, we will name them,” Martin said. “And we will name them, and in a culture that respects shame, they should be people that are ashamed. And that’s a fact. That’s the way things work. And so that’s, that’s how I believe the job operates.”
As my former colleague Ryan Reilly put it, naming and shaming is “a major departure from longstanding Justice Department protocols.” Under Trump, with the White House running DOJ, all of the old standards to prevent abuse of power and prosecutorial misconduct are out. The law is now a tool to serve Trump, as either shield or sword, depending on the exigencies of the moment.
Martin is no more or less corrupt that the rest of the Trump-installed yahoos turning the Justice Department upside down. He’s just the most buffoonish of the bunch, though his successor might vie that title. Pirro is set to be sworn in as interim D.C. U.S. Attorney today.
The Corruption: Wild West Of Pardons Edition
The WSJ has a good rundown on the flagrant corruption of the pardon process in Trump II. Into this Wild West strolls Ed Martin as the new U.S. pardon attorney for the Justice Department, a position that came open when the prior pardon attorney was fired. At his farewell presser, Martin was already making noises about reviewing the Biden pardons.
Wisconsin Judge Indicted
The Trump DOJ has now secured an indictment of Wisconsin state judge Hannah Dugan on allegations that she helped an undocumented criminal defendant in her court briefly evade capture by federal agents. The two-count indictment mirrors the original charges brought against her in the case, but take a closer look at the specific affirmative acts that the Justice Department is alleging amount to criminal obstruction of a government proceeding:
One Judge Mostly Upholds Alien Enemies Act Invocation
In a weak and strangely written opinion, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Lou Haines of Western Pennsylvania became the first judge to mostly uphold President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act on the merits – though she found the Trump administration’s lack of proper notice to be constitutionally deficient and ordered a 21-day notice going forward.
Trump’s Attack On Big Law Continues
Even as President Trump is consistently losing the court cases challenging his executive orders against major law firms, he has revoked the security clearances of at least two lawyers from one of the targeted firms, WilmerHale. In his letter alerting the judge to the latest development, WilmerHale counsel Paul Clement did not say which government agency had revoked their clearances.
Harvard Fights Back Against Latest Trump Attack
The Trump administration yanked another $450 million in federal grants from Harvard, which promptly expanded its existing lawsuit against the federal government to include the newest rounds of attacks on its funding.
Quote Of The Day
“This is a once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity.”–Australian Strategic Policy Institute, urging its government to woo U.S.-based scientists and researchers caught in the Trump II attack on research and development
Library Of Congress Incursion Stirs GOPers
Morning Memo has mostly eschewed the dead-end practice of parsing every utterance by Senate Republicans for signs of splitting from Trump. But the White House incursion into the Library of Congress, using the Justice Department, does seem to have set off alarm bells among some Republicans that we haven’t seen to this point:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) said it was important for there to be a consultation on nominees such as the librarian of Congress, whom he described as having a “hybrid role between…Article I and Article II branches of government.”
Asked if there had been consultation with the White House before the firing of the librarian last week, Thune replied, “Not exactly.”
That’s still tepid language, but there was enough concern to force Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the improbable new acting Librarian of Congress, to meet with the staff of the Senate Rules Committee, the WSJ reported.
It’s not just the Library of Congress but a list of legislative branch agencies, like the Government Accountability Office, that are under threat if the executive branch asserts control over them.
The Destruction: When Winning Is Losing
The Department of Agriculture has begun restoring information on climate change that it had scrubbed from its website and promised to restore the purged content within days, but it took a lawsuit from organic farmers and environmental groups to force the restoration, which makes these kinds of victories while necessary ring a little hollow.
The Destruction: Self-Defeating Edition
It has taken some self-control not to turn Morning Memo into a running newsletter on the Trump II demolition of NOAA and the National Weather Service, but if anything I’ve over-steered in the other direction. So to right that wrong, here’s a quality rundown on the very real and present threats to human life and property that we’re going to begin confronting immediately as a result of the NWS teardown.
Trump Carves Out Special Foreign Gift Exception For Trump
On the occasion of the Qatari jumbo jet fiasco, Aaron Blake runs through Donald Trump’s long history of pretending to decry foreign money when it came to the Clintons. “My goal is to keep foreign money out of American politics,” Trump said during his 2016 campaign. “Hillary Clinton’s goal is to put the Oval Office up for sale to whatever country offers the highest price.”
The Corruption: $TRUMP Memecoin Edition
We’re going to need to shake ourselves out of our old assumption that revelations like this one – a tiny company with China ties securing funding to buy as much as $300 million of the $TRUMP memecoin – is going to set off investigations or further revelations that lead to some form of accountability for Trump’s rampant corruption. That’s just not going to happen with a Trump DOJ and a GOP-controlled Congress and immunity from the Roberts Court. As a result, this kind of report from the NYT is going to be the full extent of what we know. There’s no bigger reveal coming. There’s no other shoe to drop. This is it. This is the corruption.
Russia Is Still At It
German authorities have reportedly foiled an allegedly Russia-sponsored plot to use parcel bombs to target logistics operators in Germany.
MUST WATCH
Fascism experts Jason Stanley and the husband and wife team of Marci Shore and Timothy Snyder talk about why they have all left Yale for the University of Toronto:
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Ten Hours In: Raucous Protests, Forced Removals And No Serious Discussion Of Republicans’ Proposed Cuts To Medicaid
The House Energy and Commerce Committee met Tuesday afternoon to begin discussing committee Republicans’ budget markup, which will enact sweeping cuts to Medicaid as they try to slash $880 billion over 10 years from programs under their jurisdiction.
While little of the proposed Medicaid slashing had been discussed 10 hours into the meeting, tensions were high and bipartisan outrage over House Republicans’ efforts to gut the social safety net program was on full display.
Continue reading “Ten Hours In: Raucous Protests, Forced Removals And No Serious Discussion Of Republicans’ Proposed Cuts To Medicaid”One Judge Finds A Way To Uphold The Alien Enemies Act Removals
For the first time, a federal judge looked at Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelans, and found a way to (kind of, sort of) agree.
Continue reading “One Judge Finds A Way To Uphold The Alien Enemies Act Removals”House Dems Weigh Legal Action Over Trump’s Library Of Congress Meddling: ‘The President Probably Violated The Law’
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Democrats will be looking into President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Librarian of Congress Carla D. Hayden, saying “litigation will be evaluated strongly.”
Continue reading “House Dems Weigh Legal Action Over Trump’s Library Of Congress Meddling: ‘The President Probably Violated The Law’”The Cost Of Medicaid Cuts For Elderly Americans
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
Republicans in Congress intend to cut about $880 billion in federal health care spending.
One of their primary targets is Medicaid. That government program covers 82 million Americans with health insurance. Most of the people enrolled in the program are low income, have disabilities, or both.
Medicaid, jointly funded by the federal government and the states, is also the biggest funder in the U.S. of long-term care services, whether they are delivered in the patient’s home, another location where they spend part of their day or a nursing home. That makes it particularly important for older adults and those with disabilities. All states must meet the basic federal guidelines for Medicaid coverage. But 41 states have opted to take advantage of the Affordable Care Act provision that expanded eligibility to cover more people under the program.
We are gerontology researchers who study health and financial well-being in later life. We’ve been analyzing what the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts might be.
While the debate about how to reduce the budget focuses largely on dollars and cents, we believe that cutting federal spending on Medicaid would harm the health and well-being of millions of Americans by reducing their access to care. In our view, it’s also likely that any savings achieved in the short term would be smaller than the long-term increase in health care costs born by the federal government, the states and patients – including for many Americans who are 65 and older.
Weak track record
Wary of backlash from their constituents, Republicans have agreed on a strategy that would largely cut Medicaid spending in a roundabout way.
Previous efforts by the GOP in some states, such as imposing work requirements for some people to get Medicaid benefits, have not greatly reduced costs. That’s largely because there are relatively few people enrolled in the Medicaid program who are physically able to be employed and aren’t already in the workforce. Nor have past efforts to reduce fraud, waste and abuse led to significant savings.
According to widespread media reports, Republicans are considering changes that would cut the amount of money that the federal government reimburses states for what they spend on Medicaid.
In May 2025, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 8.6 million Americans would lose their health insurance coverage should the GOP proposal become law.
Historically, states have dealt with budget cuts by reducing their payments to health care providers, limiting eligibility or restricting benefits. These reductions all particularly affected home- and community-based services that many disabled and older adults rely on.
About 3 in 4 of the people with Medicaid coverage who receive long-term care through the program get that care at home, in their communities or both, rather than residing in a nursing home. States save an estimated 26 cents for every dollar spent on those services delivered outside nursing homes.
Losing coverage can be harmful for your health
We recently analyzed data from a nationally representative study of approximately 6,000 people who had Medicaid coverage but lost it when they turned age 65 because their income exceeded 100% of the federal poverty level. In 2025, that cutoff is about $15,560 for a single person and $21,150 for a couple.
Medicaid income eligibility generally drops from 138% to 100% of the federal poverty level at age 65 once Medicare becomes a person’s primary health insurer.
The people who participated in the study had lost their Medicaid coverage upon turning 65 between 1998 and 2020. Our team followed the experiences of these participants over a 10-year period starting at age 65 to see how they fared compared with people who continue to be enrolled in Medicaid after their 65th birthday.
What we found was both surprising and disturbing.
Fewer activities of daily living
Over the decade following that milestone, the people who lost their Medicaid coverage had more chronic conditions and could perform fewer activities of daily living, such as bathing and getting dressed, without any assistance as compared with those who still had Medicaid coverage. In addition, they were twice as likely to experience depression and be in fair or poor health.
As people’s health worsened, they also went to the hospital more often and stayed there longer. They also used outpatient surgery services more frequently.
These services are particularly expensive for the health care system. Depending on the service, it may also be costly for patients. Unlike the comprehensive coverage of Medicaid, the Medicare program fully covers only inpatient hospitalizations, short-term nursing facility care, hospice, some short-term home care, annual wellness visits, vaccines and some basic preventive care. Beyond that, Medicare requires the payment of premiums to help with uncovered services that can also include deductibles and copays.
This arrangement can lead to significant out-of-pocket costs that make health care hard for low-income older adults to afford unless they have both Medicare and Medicaid coverage.
We also found that older people who lost Medicaid coverage were less likely to see their primary care physician for routine and follow-up care, despite being enrolled in Medicare. This explains in part why they are going to the hospital more often, likely avoiding routine health care that may incur out-of-pocket costs and eventually utilizing Medicare-covered hospital care when needed.
In short, we found that exiting the Medicaid program upon turning 65 actually leads to an increase in the use of some of the most expensive health care services, such as inpatient hospitalization and outpatient surgery. So although Medicaid may no longer pay for these costs, the rest of the health care system does.
Just under 90% of older adults enrolled in Medicare have some kind of supplemental coverage that helps them pay for services that the program doesn’t cover. For 16% of the people with Medicare coverage, Medicaid covers those additional health care costs. The rest of that nearly 90% obtain supplemental coverage from private insurance companies or are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan that’s run by a private company instead of the government.
However, 11% of Americans covered by Medicare don’t have any additional coverage. It is likely that those who lost Medicaid benefits at age 65 may not be able to afford any other supplemental coverage options and fall into this group.
People who lose Medicaid coverage may die sooner
One of our more troubling findings was that people who lost Medicaid coverage at age 65 were 14% more likely to die within the next 10 years than were those who kept their coverage in addition to gaining Medicare coverage. This was true even though the people who lost their Medicaid access tended to start out in better health.
Roughly 12 million Americans are enrolled in both Medicare and Medicaid today. Much is at stake for them and other low-income people as Congress considers making major changes to the program to cut federal spending on it.
For some Americans, it’s a matter of life and death. For others, it’s a matter of healthy versus unhealthy aging that leads to costlier health care not just for themselves but for the U.S. as a whole.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Chuck Beat the Rap
They’re already calling him “BinderKapow” Edwards. But Asheville police have now announced that they will not be filing charges against the North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards over the alleged binder-whack incident at a Rotary Club conference over the weekend in Asheville.
Trump DOJ Uses State Secrets Claim To Stonewall Abrego Garcia
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
Two Months And Counting
We’re coming up on two months since Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongfully removed from the United States, despite an immigration judge order barring it, and sent to a prison in El Salvador. Two months of incarceration for a deportation that the Trump administration admits was an error, and two months of stonewalling federal courts by the Trump administration, which refuses to try to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release despite a month-old Supreme Court order to do so.
In a late night filing in federal court in Maryland, the Trump DOJ continued to tell the courts to pound sand, in so many words, rather than divulge the details of what it’s done and what it plans to do to facilitate his release. The Trump DOJ isn’t as explicit as that; it’s more slippery and it continues to argue that it has complied with all court orders. But the upshot of raising tenuous state secrets claims to thwart discovery in the case is to further stonewall and delay, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argue:
“The fact that the Government has repeatedly publicized information—in congressional testimony, public interviews, and social media posts—about Abrego Garcia and its unwillingness to facilitate his return confirms that answering the requested discovery would not imperil national security. More likely, the Government’s assertion of state secrets is consistent with an effort to avoid judicial scrutiny of its actions.”
That last part is key.
Unlike in normal discovery, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis is using this process to smoke out whether the administration should be held in contempt of court for repeatedly defying court orders. Stonewalling the discovery phase is part of the same overall pattern of contemptuous behavior, though the latest conduct is cloaked in enough of a veneer of an argument to probably avoid sanctions.
The latest round of filings – including the declaration from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that is the basis for the state secrets claim – are either sealed or partly redacted so we still don’t have a complete view into the factual underpinnings for the invocation of the state secrets privilege. The seriousness of the state secrets privilege claim is colored by the administration’s belated invocation of it in the earlier Alien Enemies Act case in DC, where U.S. District Judge James Boasberg was incredulous that it could apply to those deportations.
Cutting To The Heart Of The CECOT Matter
I don’t usually burden you with reading entire legal filings, but this short new filing from the ACLU in the Alien Enemies Act case before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in D.C. cuts to the heart of the question of whether the Trump administration has constructive custody of the migrants transferred to El Salvadoran prisons.
Boasberg already seems pretty convinced that constructive custody exists, but he wants limited discovery done to help establish a clear factual basis, presumably to buttress his ruling as it goes up on appeal.
This is only the proposed discovery ACLU wants to do on behalf of those still incarcerated in El Salvador; it’s not new factual information. But the precision of the questions and their implications frame up the issue clearly:
Just in case it’s still not clear, the case before Boasberg is the most viable legal vehicle at present for securing the return of the Venezuelan nationals deported on March 15 without due process under the Alien Enemies Act.
Immigration Case Miscellany
- In a case out of the Northern District of Texas, the Trump Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to allow it to resume deporting Venezuelan nationals on grounds other than the Alien Enemies Act.
- “A federal judge ordered the release of a former student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from prison Friday, arguing the detention appeared to have ‘been almost exclusively triggered’ by the militant Zionist group Betar,” The Forward reports.
- In a case out of the Western District of Louisiana involving allegations that a 2-year-old American citizen was deported to Honduras with her non-citizen mother, the family has dismissed its lawsuits for reasons that remain murky, ABC News reports.
For Your Radar …
Not every investigation by the Trump DOJ is inherently suspect, but these are some that bear monitoring:
- The Justice Department is now investigating a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia and has given limited immunity to the owner of the vehicle he was driving, a convicted felon in an Alabama prison with whom investigators recently spoke, ABC News reports. Hard not to see this as part of the larger White House-led smear campaign against the mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia.
- The Justice Department will investigate a planned housing development in Texas that would have a mosque at its center, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) announced. The proposed project has stirred up an Islamophobic backlash among high-profile elected Republicans in the state.
- “If there was ever a textbook case of selective prosecution, the Justice Department investigation of New York Attorney General Letitia James appears to be it,” James Zirin writes.
But Why?
I’m still puzzling over precisely why the Trump administration is fixated on the Library of Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office – and especially why Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is now the acting Librarian of Congress and bringing a slew of DOJ officials there with him. Some of them were stymied yesterday from entry into the LOC’s offices.
There are partial answers to why, but they don’t really add up into a coherent whole yet. Yes, the former librarian was a Black woman. Yes, the head of the Copyright Office had just issued a warning on AI and copyrights. Yes, Blanche is Senate confirmed so he can serve as an acting official, which explains a lot of the dual-hat roles Trump administration officials are playing.
While those answers explain particular elements of this episode, they don’t offer a global theory of the case. Stay tuned.
Judges Under Threat
The low-key ominous threat of unsolicited pizza deliveries at the homes of federal judges and their family members has continued, the WaPo reports. D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michelle Childs says she has received seven anonymous pizza deliveries so far. Adding to the menace: “In recent weeks, orders have been placed in the name of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at the family home in New Jersey in 2020 by an attorney who posed as a delivery person.”
Air Force One Lite
Following up on my more pedantic concerns about the technical feasibility of retrofitting a lux Qatari 747 for Trump to use as Air Force One by later this year, I can’t find any reporting that suggests it’s close to possible.
“But retrofitting the 13-year-old aircraft to current Air Force One requirements would take years of work and billions of dollars, current and former U.S. officials say,” the WaPo reports. “Such a task would be impossible to complete before Trump leaves office.”
But for a complete look at the many layers of inanity here, from the corruption to the security threat to the practical limitations, there’s no one better that Garrett Graff. This is perfectly in his wheelhouse.
DOGE Watch
- Politico: RFK Jr., DOGE gutted legally required offices at HHS
- WaPo: The hidden ways Trump, DOGE are shutting down parts of the U.S. government
- WSJ: OMB Director Russ Vought Takes Over the DOGE Agenda
Lede Of The Day
NYT: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, posted photos on Sunday of himself and his grandchildren swimming in a contaminated Washington creek where swimming is not allowed because it is used for sewer runoff.”
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A Sad Spectacle
From TPM Reader DB …
My feeling about Qatar gifting Trump a 747 is simply that it is just embarrassing for the United States. The US can afford and can build its own state-of-the-art Air Force One. The US doesn’t need a gift from a little country of a used plane that is out of production and largely used for freight. It’s not becoming of the United States nor the President of the United States. It’s just embarrassing.