While most Trump administration officials have avoided weighing in on specifics while House Republicans grapple with how exactly they will try to discreetly slash funding for Medicaid, the Trump admin guy tasked with running the very office overseeing Medicaid and Medicare services offered his opinion on Monday.
Continue reading “No One Is On The Same Page On Medicaid Cuts—Including Guy Running Medicaid Agency”Kemp Out
Governor Brian Kemp (R) just formally announced he’s not going to run for Senate next year against Senator Jon Ossoff (D). It’s difficult to convey how big a coup this is for Democrats and how big a setback it is for Republicans for the 2026 midterms. Candidate choice is always important but seldom decisive. This is an exception. Ossoff was (and is) a favorite against everyone but Kemp. Kemp is a popular two-term governor who has managed what has eluded virtually every other Republican in the country: not being labeled “Never Trump” or anti-Trump and yet defying Trump at a critical moment. You don’t need to valorize that to recognize that that is a big selling point in what remains a tipping point state like Georgia. My own read is that Kemp recognizes the political power of that needle-threading and wants to keep it intact to run for President in 2028 or possibly even 2032.
Into the Wilds of Democratic Navel-Gazing and Big Think
About a week ago, both Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Last at The Bulwark had pieces up arguing different electoral strategies for the Democratic Party. Yglesias argued that while the current Democratic Party is at least competitive in national majority votes (good enough for bragging rights and probably the House) they are at a decisive disadvantage when it comes to winning the Senate in 2026 and in a challenging position when it comes to the Electoral College. What’s necessary, he argues, is a major repositioning on issues like guns and fossil fuels (among other issues) to make Democrats competitive in Senate contests in states like Iowa or Texas, states that often seem like they might elect a Democrat but then don’t. For the purposes of this conversation, we might slot in immigration and trans rights for Yglesias’ fossil fuels and guns. In a way, the arguments were captured by a series of speeches freshman Senator Elisa Slotkin (D-MI) started giving around the same time, in which she argued that Democrats needed to shed their reputation for being “weak and woke” in order to battle and defeat Trump.
Continue reading “Into the Wilds of Democratic Navel-Gazing and Big Think”3 Prosecutors Resign Over DOJ’s Highly Irregular Move In Police Brutality Case In LA
Morning Memo comes to you today from Pittsburgh, where my son – whose harrowing path through his college years I’ve previously shared with you – graduated yesterday.
Not Normal
Three career prosecutors resigned from the Justice Department over a highly unusual post-verdict plea agreement struck by the Trump-appointed acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles. The plea agreement comes in a case where a sheriff’s deputy was convicted back in February of using excessive force against a Black woman.
“A plea agreement filed late Thursday says if Trevor Kirk pleads guilty to misdemeanor deprivation of rights under color of law, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will ‘move to strike the jury’s finding’ that he injured his victim, which made his crime a felony,” Meghann Cuniff first reported.
On Friday, the four federal prosecutors who handled the case and did not sign the plea agreement withdrew from the case. It was signed on behalf of acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli by an assistant U.S. attorney not previously involved in the case.
On Saturday, the LA Times reported that three of the prosecutors – assistant U.S. Attorneys Eli A. Alcaraz, Brian R. Faerstein, and section chief Cassie Palmer – had resigned from the Justice Department entirely.
The plea deal sets up a dramatic downward departure in sentencing from what Kirk faced with the felony conviction, Cuniff reports:
Kirk faced about nine years in prison under U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines for his felony conviction, but his misdemeanor conviction carries a maximum of one year. However, Essayli and Keenan agreed to recommend only one year of probation. They also aren’t barring him from working in law enforcement.
A judge must still approve the plea agreement.
Judges Skeptical Of Trump DOJ
The rapid deterioration of the quality of the Justice Department’s work under President Trump has not been lost on federal judges, the WaPo reports.
Judge Strikes Down Trump EO Against Perkins Coie
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell declared “null and void” the Trump executive order targeting Perkins Coie, the first time a judge has permanently enjoined enforcement of one of President Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms.
In a 102-page opinion clearly written to be judged by history, Howell invoked Shakespeare, John Adams, and Alexis de Tocqueville in finding the executive order sent a constitutionally impermissible message: “lawyers must stick to the party line, or else.”
In an important footnote, Howell was critical of the law firms who struck deals with President Trump rather than risk being targeted by an executive order:
[S]ome clients may harbor reservations about the implications of such deals for the vigorous and zealous representation to which they are entitled from ethically responsible counsel, since at least the publicized deal terms appear only to forestall, rather than eliminate, the threat of being targeted in an Executive Order.
Only when lawyers make the choice to challenge rather than back down when confronted with government action raising non-trivial constitutional issues can a case be brought to court for judicial review of the legal merits, as was done in this case … If the founding history of this country is any guide, those who stood up in court to vindicate constitutional rights and, by so doing, served to promote the rule of law, will be the models lauded when this period of American history is written.
TPM Exclusive: A New Attack On Judicial Branch
TPM’s Josh Kovensky reports on the implications of a lawsuit by the Stephen Miller-founded America First Legal Foundation against Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. While ostensibly a FOIA lawsuit, it is asking a federal judge to declare that the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Judicial Conference of the United States are independent agencies of the executive branch. It’s a troll-ish argument but seems designed to lay the legal groundwork for President Trump to assert control over the administration of the federal judiciary.
Second Amendment Trumps Everything
The Trump administration has removed a memorial at ATF headquarters honoring victims of gun violence.
Jan. 6 Revisionism Alert
- In a remarkable encounter over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio – convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in Jan. 6. – personally thanked President Trump for pardoning him.
- In a reversal of the Justice Department’s legal position, the Trump administration has reached a settlement in principle in the $30 million wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbit, the Jan. 6 rioter who Trump has turned into a martyr. Terms of the settlement have not been disclosed.
- Senate Judiciary Democrats are blasting the Trump DOJ for taking the position that the government must refund the restitution paid by Trump-pardoned Jan. 6 defendants.
Good Read
Greg Sargent: How Trump Inadvertently Sabotaged His Own Case Against Abrego Garcia
Quote Of The Day
“In this country, the federal government doesn’t get to arrest American citizens who have not committed a crime. In this country, we don’t threaten to persecute people just because they belong to a different political party.”–Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D), after border czar Tom Homan alluded to criminal charges over a memo issued to state employees confronted by federal immigration authorities
IMPORTANT
While President Trump backed away in recent days from targeting the tax-exempt status of nonprofits beyond Harvard, Trump administration officials at the IRS continue to explore whether to alter the rules governing how nonprofit groups can be denied tax-exempt status, the WSJ reports.
The Destruction: LGBTQ Health Edition
NYT: “Of the 669 grants that the National Institutes of Health had canceled in whole or in part as of early May, at least 323 — nearly half of them — related to L.G.B.T.Q. health, according to a review by The Times of every terminated grant.”
The Destruction: Arts And Humanities Edition
- NEA: On Friday night, the National Endowment for the Arts sent out notifications cancelling grants nationwide.
- NEH: A lawsuit reveals new details of DOGE’s role in mass termination of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For The Record …
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 3, 2025
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Republicans Persist In Newest Voter Suppression Fad Despite Evidence That It Hurts Their Constituents Too
Then-candidate Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies fixated on the great “threat” of noncitizen voting in the 2024 campaigns. Despite copious research showing that this type of voter fraud is extremely rare, it was the election conspiracy theory du jour — out with bamboo fibers, magical voting machines and ballots in dumpsters, in with the “busloads of illegals.”
Continue reading “Republicans Persist In Newest Voter Suppression Fad Despite Evidence That It Hurts Their Constituents Too”The White House’s Next Orchestrated Budget Crisis
This is something I’m still trying to get my head around — both the technical legislative details as well as how all this plays in political terms. The details are still fuzzy to me, but I want to get the outlines in front of you. At the end of the summer we’ll be coming to the end of the fiscal year. DOGE has canceled tons of NIH grants and done various other things to make it really hard for NIH and other grant-making parts of HHS to do their work and spend the congressionally appropriated money. So by late August a very large pot of money will have built up and you will be coming to the end of the fiscal year in which Congress mandated that it be spent.
Continue reading “The White House’s Next Orchestrated Budget Crisis”Trump Got Tired Of Waiting On GOP Lawmakers To Decide Whether To Relinquish Their Authority
Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️
President Trump wants to send to Congress a chunk of the DOGE federal funding cuts that Congress, in a properly functioning democracy, should have voted on in the first place. Its called a rescissions package, and it is a mechanism for Congress to vote to approve a small sliver of the cuts that the executive branch has already enacted without the legislative branch’s permission, as well as a request to, essentially, end all federal support for PBS and NPR, the nation’s most-well-known public media organizations. As my colleague Emine Yücel reported this week, Trump’s constitutionally backwards approach to a pretty standard executive branch-legislative branch request is designed to give an air of legitimacy to the whole DOGE operation, while also allowing Trump to get some revenge on the news media.
Continue reading “Trump Got Tired Of Waiting On GOP Lawmakers To Decide Whether To Relinquish Their Authority”David Horowitz Dies
I had not seen that David Horowitz died. He was 86. I have said many harsh things about Horowitz over the years, going back to one of my earliest pieces in The American Prospect in the late 90s. I even had a few personal run-ins with him. I stand by all the stuff I wrote but it’s not the moment to rehash the specifics. You can peruse our archives. Horowitz was actually the first person, very early in my career, who was verbally confrontational with me in person. I wasn’t a victim here: He was reacting to highly critical and dismissive things I’d written about him in that Prospect article. I note it because it was just my first experience with fights you pick in print coming to life in person. He seemed to seek out those confrontations. That acidic and aggressive personality you saw on TV was him off camera too.
Continue reading “David Horowitz Dies”The Signal Scandal Somehow Just Managed to Get Much Worse
At least for the moment this hasn’t gotten much attention. So let me point your attention to a new part of the White House Signal chat story which is actually a pretty big deal. You likely saw that yesterday Reuters published a photo of a Trump Cabinet meeting in which Mike Waltz could be seen using Signal on his phone. That was pretty unbelievable. You could see several of the chats, though mainly who he was chatting with more than the contents. Embarrassing, etc. But 404 Media, a newish tech news site, noticed that there was more than that. He wasn’t actually using Signal at all. He was using a third-party Signal knock-off which allows you to use your Signal account but with additional features.
Continue reading “The Signal Scandal Somehow Just Managed to Get Much Worse”Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Control Of Court System
Close allies of President Trump are asking a judge to give the White House control over much of the federal court system.
Continue reading “Trump Allies Sue John Roberts To Give White House Control Of Court System”