This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Four critical cases have reached the Supreme Court via its shadow docket in recent weeks. They touch on everything from birthright citizenship and unconstitutional deportations to funding cuts to programs the administration has labeled as “DEI” and the firing of federal employees without cause.
Continue reading “Rule Of Law Or Rule By Law? SCOTUS Gets Its Chance To Halt Trump’s Rampage—Or Greenlight It”The full U.S. Court of Appeals for DC has reinstated a member of the National Labor Relations Board and a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board that President Donald Trump tried to fire earlier this year. The court split 7-4.
Continue reading “Full DC Circuit Unfires—For Now—NLRB, MSPB Board Members That Trump Lawlessly Axed”This post isn’t quite a post in the way I normally do them, more jotting down some of my brainstorming over the weekend.
Universities are a core pillar of civil society. Law firms are not. Observers have been waiting to see what would come of an amicus-brief-organizing campaign in support of Perkins Coie, the Seattle-based firm which was the first to be targeted by the Trump administration. Perkins Coie is also, significantly, the law firm for much of the institutional Democratic Party. It finally came out, and the brief was signed by more than 500 firms across the country. But it was not signed by any of the nation’s Top 20 firms, measured by revenue. I don’t know enough about the internal finances of the nation’s top-grossing firms. But I suspect they’re mostly like Paul, Weiss, which is to say they’re largely M&A firms, at least in terms of where they make their money — M&A and the management of other corporate transactions I don’t know acronyms for. It’s basically impossible to be in that business if you’re at war with the state that regulates mergers and acquisitions.
Just after Paul, Weiss cut their deal with President Trump, I spoke to a number of people either at the firm or proximate to it. One thing they helped me understand is that for firms like that, with a big M&A practice centered on partners with books of business ranging well into the tens of millions of dollars, it’s not just the clients who disappear in a flash. The money-making partners can too. So these vast, hugely money-making entities are actually quite fragile in their own way. The equivalent of a bank run dynamic and poof, they’re gone. But law firms come and law firms go. It is what it is.
Continue reading “Notes on Civil Society’s Quasi-War with A Renegade President”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”
