Weeks have gone by since the Trump administration rushed three planeloads of deportees to an El Salvadorian labor camp. And yet, there are reams of basic questions about what happened to which we do not have answers.
Continue reading “The Lawlessness Of The Alien Enemies Removals Come Into Focus”I get asked a lot about what ordinary people should do to have an impact in this moment. I’ve said a number of times that studies I’ve seen show that it was the work of Indivisible groups of mostly normie Democrats around the country that had the biggest impact countering Trumpism the first time around. That said, this isn’t meant to be prescriptive. Let a hundred flowers bloom. Different people will want to get active in different ways. I say this simply to make clear you don’t need a kick-ass theory or the perfect group. The biggest thing is just getting organized with other like-minded people.
Continue reading “Get Active at the State Level Too”UPDATE: As of 5 p.m. Friday, only half the tickets remain.
As TPM’s 25th year rolls on, we’re rolling out to Chicago. We hope you’ll join us as we continue to celebrate this milestone while also taking a sober look at the political landscape in which we find ourselves.
On May 14th, we’ll be nearly four months into Trump II. A lot has happened so far, to put it mildly. Josh & Kate will discuss some of the most consequential and important developments to date.
Tickets are on sale now for our live show in Chicago. You can get them here. If you are member, you should have already received an email with your discount code.
After the show there will be a brief audience Q&A, followed by a cocktail hour where some other TPM staffers will be around to chat. All attendees receive one complimentary cocktail.
Capacity is limited so please get your tickets as soon as possible if interested.
In a 2-1 decision Friday, a North Carolina Court of Appeals sided with Republican state Supreme Court candidate and Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin in an ongoing legal battle over the results of the state’s Supreme Court race, ruling that thousands of ballots in the November 2024 race may have been counted illegally.
Continue reading “Riggs Will ‘Promptly’ Appeal Ruling That Helps GOP Opponent In His Effort To Steal The Election”Everyone in the country at the moment, albeit from different vantage points, seems to have the same question: What the actual fuck is going on?
Is the plan to have permanent tariffs? Are these meant as the basis of some kind of negotiation? Are we going to have blanket tariffs as the basis of a system of corruption in which favored industries and companies gain exemptions in exchange for fealty and cash? (So, countries as universities and law firms?) Is the idea just to replace income taxes with tariff income and fundamentally shift taxes to the middle and working classes?
At a basic level, the entire MAGA movement, and Donald Trump from whom all of it stems, simply doesn’t grasp the nature of American power or its limitations. In their view, the United States is the natural and inherent dominating power in the world. We’re the most powerful and the strongest. And starting from that view, they look out onto the world and think if we are in charge, why don’t we act like we’re in charge?
Continue reading “In Search of the Plan Behind Trump’s Global Economic Crisis”A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
All it took for President Trump to fire keys members of his own national security team was the urging of right-wing conspiracist Laura Loomer in an insane Oval Office meeting Wednesday.
Loomer, who was a peculiar figure accompanying Trump on the campaign trail last year, has previously described herself as “pro-white nationalism” and a “proud Islamophobe,” as TPM’s Hunter Walker has noted.
Following the meeting, Trump yesterday proceeded to fire:
(Note: The National Security Council is a White House entity overseen by the president’s national security adviser; whereas, the National Security Agency is an intelligence agency within the Defense Department tasked primarily with scooping up vast quantities of signals intelligence.)
In the Oval Office meeting, Loomer continued her attacks on the alleged disloyalty of NSC and NSA officials. Embattled national security adviser Mike Waltz reportedly made a brief appearance to defend his staff. Among the attendees who witnessed Loomer making her demands of the President: Vice President JD Vance, chief of staff Susie Wiles, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Sergio Gor, the head of the presidential personnel office.
Acting Pentagon Inspector General Steven Stebbins is investigating the use of Signal by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials. The probe will include whether officials complied with rules governing classification and document retention, according to a memo from Stebbins.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said not to expect a decision from him until next week on whether he’ll hold the Trump administration in contempt of court for violating his order blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
In a tense hearing, Boasberg grilled a hapless Trump DOJ attorney, who had few good answers. Boasberg has the option of holding an evidentiary hearing or ruling on the record before him.
Related: Marty Lederman examines the poor lawyering from the Trump DOJ’s acting solicitor general in the Alien Enemies Act case: It “fall[s] considerably short of the historical standards for quality and forthrightness that typify briefs that the Office of the Solicitor General files in the Supreme Court.”
A federal judge in Maryland will consider today an emergency request to order the White House to retrieve an El Salvadoran man deported in error despite an earlier court order barring his removal.
“Kirkland & Ellis, the largest U.S. law firm by revenue, is in talks with the White House to avoid an executive order similar to those levied against several of its rivals,” the WSJ reports.
The Trump administration is poised to block $510 million in federal funding for Brown University as part of its attack on higher education under the bogus banner of combatting antisemitism.
In related news, the Trump administration sent Harvard a list of demands for the university to have a shot at getting its federal funding restored. The list mirrors the demands previously made of Columbia University, which capitulated to the extortion.
Under the guise of anti-DEI enforcement, the Trump administration is threatening the funding of public schools. Most immediately at risk appear to be schools with high percentages of low-income students, which get additional federal funding: “In a memo sent to top public education officials across the country, the Education Department said that funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students, known as Title I funding, was at risk pending compliance with the administration’s directive,” the NYT reported.
NYT: “The Trump administration has failed to disburse congressionally approved funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the news network originally set up to counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, despite a judge’s order to keep it operating, according to court filings and officials at the news organization.”
“That was always the plan. Part of the DOGE—we talked about this from the beginning—is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes.”–HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the prospect of reinstating some federal workers and programs after purging his own department
Thanks to DOGE, more layoffs occurred in March than at any time since the midst of the pandemic: 216,215 of the 275,240 layoffs (nearly 80%) were federal government workers.
AP: “Democratic officials in 19 states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump’s attempt to reshape elections across the U.S., calling it an unconstitutional invasion of states’ clear authority to run their own elections.”
The New Jersey Democratic senator spoke to TPM’s Hunter Walker after his bathroom-less 25-plus-hour Senate floor speech: “The one that I wouldn’t advise people to do is that I stopped drinking the day before. I stopped liquids. … That definitely put my body in distress.”
The U.S. pardon attorney was fired by the Trump Justice Department after she refused to endorse restoring gun rights to Mel Gibson, who lost them after a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor. Elizabeth Oyer had resisted internal pressure from a DOJ official who said Gibson “has a personal relationship with President Trump.” Now, Attorney General Pam Bondi has approved Gibson for the list of those getting their gun rights back.
A cool time-lapse video of one of Kilauea’s episodic eruptions last week. Recent episodes have featured towering lava fountains jetting above the rim of the summit crater. For reference, the crater walls in the background are about 500-feet tall:
Volcano word of the day: Patience
— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) April 3, 2025
While not exclusive to volcanology, this term is particularly relevant to the ongoing eruption at Kilauea. Timelapse from Mar 29, 2025, shows episode 15. Sequence starts with filling-draining cycles in vent & abruptly shifts to major fountaining. pic.twitter.com/nUlTbh7KhQ
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President Trump is planning to send to Congress a package of government spending cuts that Elon Musk’s DOGE has already chaotically (and unconstitutionally) implemented at the federal level. The White House apparently believes it has the votes in the House and the Senate to pass such a package.
Continue reading “Trump Plans To Force Congress To Swallow Whatever DOGE Cooks Up”Earlier this week I noted the fact that the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services had been oddly immune thus far to the DOGE axe, not just compared to other HHS divisions and agencies but across almost the entire federal government. This seemed in large part because of the role Brad Smith, a key DOGEr who worked at CMS during Trump’s first term, and because of nominal DOGE chief Amy Gleason who worked in high level roles at Smith’s companies. I noted that relative immunity because there were signs that might soon change. It has now changed.
On March 31st, CMS COO Amy Brandt sent out instructions for major cuts that had to take place across CMS. As she explained, HHS had been assigned a total amount of savings from canceled contracts. And of that total amount CMS was responsible for just over $2.7 billion. That amounted to 35% of CMS’s average total spend on contracts from the years FY2023 and 2024. So in technical terms, a shit-ton of money and a huge percentage of the overall budget.
Continue reading “The Axe Rises Over Medicare and Medicaid”For more than a day between Monday night and Tuesday evening this week, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) captured the country’s attention with an extraordinary speech protesting President Trump. Booker’s 25 hours-plus remarks on the Senate floor broke a more than 60-year-old record while earning hundreds of thousands of views and hundreds of millions of likes on social media. In the aftermath of the speech, Booker talked to TPM about his strategy, how it felt to see the Senate return to regular business, and how he hopes to inspire the public to join him in protest.
“I’ve seen, time and time again, Trump do things and then reverse himself because some force stops him. He’s a guy that is going to trample over any kind of separation of powers, trample over norms, trample over bounds of decency. I could go through all the things that this guy is going to do if we let him — if we let him,” Booker told TPM in a phone conversation on Wednesday night.
“So my thing is, the more organized people are, the more activated people are, the more engaged people are, the more they exercise the greatest power you have in a democracy, which is your voice, the more creative in their protests they are to awaken the conscience of others, that’s how we win this,” he added.
Senate rules required Booker to stay on his feet the entire time in order to hold the floor. He was not able to take bathroom breaks and, apart from brief moments where colleagues were able to support him by asking questions, Booker, who was aiming to break the previous record for the Senate’s longest speech — held by the late South Carolina segregationist Strom Thurmond (R-SC) — had to speak continuously. On Tuesday afternoon, somewhere around hour twenty, Booker’s heart was racing and he experienced intense cramps.
“I think I hit a wall, physically,” Booker recounted.
However, he had no doubt about continuing, he said. Part of that strength came from colleagues who showed up to watch and cheer as he approached the finish line. And, according to Booker, something else came through for him as well.
“The body has its limitations, but the spirit doesn’t. And there’s a lot of people that … hit a wall physically that find somehow, you know, to push past that because you’re riding the spirit,” Booker said. “In the last five hours, I mean, you’re standing in that chamber and it’s full and you see your staff and you see it in their eyes. …The energy in that space that I was in. … I was just being carried by the spirit.”
Some news outlets — including TPM — measured Booker’s remarks as lasting 25 hours and five minutes. Others counted 25 hours and four minutes. Booker told TPM he wasn’t sure which number was right: He started a timer on his phone the moment he took the floor, but he forgot to stop the clock when he left and was embraced by colleagues, staff, and supporters. One thing Booker knew for sure was that he wanted to beat Thurmond’s 24-hour-and-18-minute speech, which was an explicitly racist filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. After he broke Thurmond’s record, Booker told reporters he had viewed it as a “shadow” that was hanging over the Senate. And, when he approached the record mark, Booker said he made up his mind to push further.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to stop at the record. I’m going to go to 25 hours,’” Booker said.
Whether it was four minutes beyond that or five, Booker said he’s “grateful” for the “little change” he added to his 25 hours.
Booker’s remarks included a mix of religious fervor, quotes from past leaders, and, particularly, references to Civil Rights icons, especially the late activist and congressman John Lewis, who is one of his major influences. He peppered these bits of hope throughout his extensive, detailed case, which focused on the abuses and dangers perpetuated by Trump’s second administration in the two months and change since he took office. Booker’s staff said the planning for the speech included preparing over a dozen binders with over a thousand pages of material. There was a distinct emphasis on letters from constituents personally affected by Trump’s wave of deportations and his aggressive cuts to federal jobs and programs. Booker also included analysis from conservative economists and legal minds to underscore the idea that opposing Trump should not be a partisan concern.
As a former college football player who has remained focused on his health and fitness, Booker’s preparation also included a physical component.
“If I had to advise somebody … I might tell them to do it differently. My strategy was to get my body into ketosis by fasting. So I started fasting on Friday … I knew from doing intermittent fasting that when I’m in ketosis I get wicked energy and clarity of thought,” Booker said. “The one that I wouldn’t advise people to do is that I stopped drinking the day before. I stopped liquids. … That definitely put my body in distress.
Booker wears an Oura ring, which tracks various physical data points. The numbers from the final stretch of his speech were striking.
“I started sweating, my heart rate jumped up. You could see the line from a normal heart rate to suddenly well over a hundred. … And then my body in the end, I was getting the kind of muscle cramps I used to get when I played football where you’re dehydrated,” Booker said. “It worked in the sense that I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, but it definitely put a lot of strain on my body.”
After walking off the floor, Booker quickly had a banana and watermelon.
“I just wanted to flush my body with electrolytes and fruit,” he said.
However, there was something else on the menu. Within minutes of Booker yielding the floor, Republicans brought forward a vote on Matthew Whitaker, a former DOJ official during the first Trump administration who is the president’s pick to be ambassador to NATO. Democrats agreed to unanimous consent, which allowed the Whitaker vote to proceed more quickly without debate and other procedural delays. There was a clear whiplash effect in watching Democratic senators allow a Trump nominee to proceed after Booker expended so much energy with a display that he said was designed to disrupt “business as usual” and show these were not “normal” times. However, Booker said he was not surprised to see Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune get back to his own schedule.
“I knew that Thune has an agenda. I’m not talking about an ideological agenda, he has things he needs to accomplish on the floor of the Senate,” said Booker. “He was going to find a way and, maybe if I had pushed him into midnight, he would’ve not have done it, but it was 8:00 p.m.”
Nevertheless, Booker was certain he had “accomplished something” and that it went “far beyond” perhaps even Thune’s expectations. Booker did manage to delay the Whitaker vote. Amid his fruit break, he voted against the nomination. However, Whitaker was confirmed and even earned the support of one of Booker’s fellow Democrats, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).
The Whitaker vote touches on frustration that many progressives have had with congressional Democrats since Trump took office in January. Many on the left want the party’s Senate minority to oppose Trump with every tool they have including procedural maneuvers such as withholding unanimous consent. Booker was well aware of the frustration from the public, which, he said, included “venting” from even some of his own staff.
Booker said he agreed with constituents who felt elected Democrats had to “do more” and that this was a major driver of his decision to spend over a day holding up the floor.
“What we were doing was inadequate,” said Booker. “So, thus, I’m doing more. I’m trying something different. I’m going to take a risk. And that really was the impetus for the whole thing. … I think one of the messages I was trying to deliver was, okay, I’m stepping up more. I will. I hear you.”
While Booker clearly believed this was a time for drastic action, he does not agree with the calls to use unanimous consent and other tools to dramatically slow down Senate business.
“That’s something that my colleagues and I discuss around, and round, and round: What are the tactics available to us? The challenge with taking steps like that is the Senate is the kind of place … when you break it, it never gets fixed,” Booker said.
As an example of this, Booker pointed to the past calls for Democrats to eliminate the filibuster on judicial nominees, which required sixty votes for confirmation rather than a simple majority. Republicans consistently used that rule to block President Obama’s court picks. In 2013, the same year Booker joined the Senate, Democrats were in the majority and their leader, Harry Reid, lifted the filibuster for most presidential nominees in order to sit some of Obama’s judges. Four years later, when the Republicans were in control, they followed suit and ended the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. That move helped Trump cement a conservative majority on the nation’s highest Court that is set to last for a long time.
“You have to really consider in the Senate that, when you do something, it’ll never be fixed. When you ratchet one way, you can never ratchet it back,” Booker said.
Booker suggested grinding the Senate to a halt in the short term might leave it that way “in the long run.” He also questioned whether procedural maneuvering would really have public impact.
“Would really America notice if we were denying unanimous consent?” Booker asked.
Progressives eager for more opposition to Trump have also been frustrated to see Democrats voting to confirm some of the president’s nominees. Booker has voted for four of Trump’s Cabinet picks. This is one area where his thinking has changed watching Trump’s actions in office.
“In the beginning … I had a different spirit. I didn’t know that he would go to that many extremes as he did,” Booker said.
Once Trump ally Elon Musk and his “DOGE” team began going inside federal agencies and seeking what Booker described as “the most private personal information of people,” the senator’s mind changed.
“At that point, my staff and I said, ‘We can’t vote for these people anymore,’” Booker said.
However, Booker said there is an “exception” to this rule. He will make a pragmatic “calculation” and consider supporting a nominee if he believes it is someone his office can have a “relationship” and communication with in the event there’s “an urgency to help” his constituents with a given issue.
“That’s some of the calculus we’re using these days, is — and it still resulted in pretty much cross the board nos, but — we’re still looking at candidates and thinking to ourselves, pros and cons,” Booker said.
Booker said his speech came out of deciding this was a time to “think outside of the box and try something different.” He alluded to the words of James Baldwin as he described the strategy behind going for the 1957 record.
“Will we win for certain? I don’t know, but, as it was said by somebody far or greater than me, nothing that’s not faced can be changed. If you don’t face it, if you don’t try, if you don’t step up, you can’t make the change,” said Booker. “So, I want to be one of those people out there saying, ‘Look at me in the position that I have and hold me to account.’ … I’m a United States senator. … It is on me. I own it. I have to do more. I have to show how much I’m willing to fight.”
While Booker wants to be accountable for his role in standing against Trump, he also wanted his stand on the Senate floor to encourage the public to find their own ways to protest and oppose the president’s agenda. Booker said he’s “asking everybody” to look in the mirror and “ask yourself, ‘Have I done enough?’”
“Your little bit of good, my little bit of good, everybody’s little bit of good coming together can overwhelm anything Donald Trump could try to do to us,” Booker said. “We know who he is. What we’re going to find out, I think, in the coming weeks and months is who we are, what the character of our country is.”
The Trump Justice Department was at times squirrely, at times withholding and at times quick to whip out attorney-client privilege Thursday as a federal judge tried to discern who exactly in the administration may have violated his orders.
Continue reading “Judge Puts Screws To Trump DOJ On Who Exactly May Have Ignored His Orders On Alien Enemies Act”
