I just got a new iPhone. I didn’t need a newer version. But my old one was broken in a way that wasn’t easily fixed. So I submitted myself to the hard wheel of planned obsolescence. I’m always happy for ever-improved image quality. Otherwise, for me, it was just a need for a new, undamaged phone. But this is one of the models which Apple tells you very frequently has their AI bundled into the device. Which I’m told is awesome. Or that’s what they’re telling me. A lot. And my sense generally is that Apple is the least over-the-top of the big techs in this regard.
As I’ve been using the new phone, I’ve noticed that the Apple texting app now takes suggested phrases and completing your words to the next level — as in kind of an absurd level.
In an unprecedented last-minute intervention, rookie CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss spiked a “60 Minutes” segment on the experiences of Alien Enemies Act detainees at CECOT in El Salvador.
The announcement that the Inside CECOT segment would not run came only hours before airtime Sunday:
It looks like it's been scrubbed from every official 60 Minutes page now. It's only a 30-second promo but here it is if you didn't get a chance to see it.
In a blistering email to her colleagues, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi pinned the blame on Weiss for spiking her CECOT segment:
Bari Weiss apparently spiked Sharyn Alfonsi’s 60 Minutes segment on CECOT for political reasons. Here’s her email to the news staff. Sharyn Alfonsi has more guts than every single beltway reporter.
The official line from CBS News is that the segment “needed additional reporting.” Among the issues Weiss raised with the segment: She reportedly objected to the segment’s use of the word “migrants” to describe the Venezuelan nationals deported to CECOT because they were in the U.S. illegally, the NYT reported.
But more alarmingly, Weiss bent over backwards to give the Trump White House another bite at the apple to respond to the segment even though the administration had already declined to comment to “60 Minutes,” according to the NYT:
One of Ms. Weiss’s suggestions was to include a fresh interview with Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, or a similarly high-ranking Trump administration official, two of the people said. Ms. Weiss provided contact information for Mr. Miller to the “60 Minutes” staff.
It was this new Weiss-imposed hurdle that especially infuriated Alfonsi. “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient,” Alfonsi wrote in her email.
The Trump administration had an extraordinary and corrupt level of involvement with the recent $8 billion sale of CBS’ parent company Paramount. To get past the Trump-controlled FCC, the purchaser Skydance agreed to appoint an ombudsman, review the network’s content, and pare back DEI initiatives. The ombudsman ended up being a conservative think tanker with longtime Republican Party ties.
Weiss, widely seen as being tasked with shifting CBS News toward a more administration friendly posture, is in the midst of a major overhaul of the news division.
A Revealing Oops in the Abrego Garcia Case
A quick rundown on developments in the criminal case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia:
Abrego Garcia became the first criminal defendant to cite White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ admission to Vanity Fair that President Trump was engaged in “score settling.” It came in a filing in support of his claim of vindictive prosecution.
In the filing — a motion to enforce subpoenas for testimony from top DOJ officials — Abrego Garcia’s attorneys let slip that the judge in his criminal case had ruled earlier this month in a still-sealed order that associate deputy attorney general Aakash Singh had a “leading role in the government’s decision to prosecute” Abrego Garcia. They later filed a corrected version that redacted the quote pulled from the sealed order.
The significance of all of this comes in the context of Abrego Garcia’s vindictive prosecution claim. DOJ has tried to shut down any inquiries into the role of DOJ higher-ups in the decision to prosecute Abrego Garcia, insisting that acting U.S. Attorney Robert McGuire alone made the decision. But the judge apparently found that internal DOJ docs show otherwise, which should bolster Abrego Garcia’s effort to obtain more documents and testimony in support of his vindictive prosecution claim.
For a fuller explanation, I wrote about all of this at length over the weekend.
DOJ Finally Appeals Halligan Dismissals
In a sign that it may know it has a weak case, the Trump DOJ waited until the last minute to appeal the dismissals of the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both cases were ordered dismissed when a judge ruled that Lindsey Halligan was invalidly appointed as interim U.S. attorney, so the appeals court will be considering the appointments question.
The Newest Phase of the Epstein Coverup
The Friday deadline imposed by law for the Justice Department to turn over the Epstein files to Congress came and went with brazen new concealment, selective redactions, and disappeared records:
Despite the deadline, not all of the Epstein files were released.
The DOJ used the same standard for redacting the identifying information of Epstein victims and applied it to “politically exposed individuals and government officials,” Fox News Digital reported. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche later insisted that there are “no redactions of famous people.”
At least 16 files that were available Friday on the DOJ’s Epstein webpage — including a photograph showing President Donald Trump — had disappeared by Saturday, the AP reports. Blanche said the files were temporarily removed to redact the names or images of victims who had complained to DOJ.
The Destruction
Vaccines: In a fundamental shift, the Trump administration plans to stop recommending most childhood vaccines.
USAID: Congolese rape survivors search in vain for medicine after USAID cuts.
Smithsonian: The White House doesn’t control museum funding, but it is threatening to withhold monies anyway unless the Smithsonian submits extensive additional documentation for a White House-led review of its exhibits and programming.
The New Republic: The Americans Who Saw All This Coming—but Were Ignored and Maligned
Quote of the Day
“This is an oligarchic and authoritarian takeover of our democracy, yes. But it is fueled by white supremacist ideology. That is the seductive messaging through which so many have been lured into participating in this national betrayal.”–Howard University law professor Sherrilyn Ifill
Hegseth Watch
Land mines: Hegseth reverses land mine policy to allow use of controversial weapon.
Chaplain Corps: Hegseth announced an overhaul of the military’s Chaplain Corps, with an emphasis on (presumably Christian) spirituality: “Our chaplains are chaplains, not emotional support officers, and we’re going to treat them as such,” Hegseth said in a video. “Faith and virtue were traded for self-help and self-care.”
Strikes in Syria: Hegseth declared that U.S. strikes on Islamic State targets inside of Syria were a “direct response” to the Dec. 13 attack that killed three Americans: “This is not the beginning of a war — it is a declaration of vengeance.” Here’s the problem:
By this point, the elimination/circumvention of attorneys throughout national security agencies has predictably resulted in open boasting of illegality: Reprisal for "vengeance" is never a legitimate basis for the use of force. That's been well-established … [1]www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u…
It began in the spring, when Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) went to work and “saw a dozen masked ICE agents in the lobby” of his office building.
“What’s going on here?” he recalled asking, incredulously. “What is happening?”
After the initial shock, the congressman and his staff saw that the masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had become a regular presence at the immigration courts located in the same federal building as his Manhattan district office. Along with two other similar courts in the city, his building had become the site of an unprecedented wave of aggressive detentions that began during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration. The detentions largely targeted undocumented immigrants who were in the midst of legal proceedings to obtain residency and citizenship.
Goldman, who was first elected in 2022, has long been a staunch opponent of Trump and his immigration policies in Congress. However, when Trump’s mass deportation agenda literally showed up outside his office, his involvement escalated, with his office becoming the headquarters for a legal operation that has secured the release of nine ICE detainees.
“We have our Washington D.C. angle to it, with the legislation and the letters and public messaging to make Americans aware of what is actually going on,” Goldman said during an extensive interview with TPM earlier this month. “But we also are sitting across the street from families who are being torn apart, and if there’s a way for us to help them, I’ve told my staff, do anything possible.”
It was pretty obvious that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ admission to Vanity Fair that President Trump was engaged in “score settling” was going to make it into a legal filing sooner or later. Now it has.
In a filing overnight, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys cited the Wiles interview as part of their bid to dismiss the indictment against him on vindictive prosecution grounds:
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the Justice Department is only releasing some of the Epstein files Friday, a move members of Congress slammed as a violation of the law President Trump signed last month.
I’ve been under the weather. That partly explains missing two days of posts. But another reason is a feeling of repetition. Everything I see in our politics right now — or at least at the pinnacle where Donald Trump dominates all the visuals and attention — has a feeling of drift, spectacle and fragmentation. Trump’s ballroom epitomizes it — crass, stupid, vulgar, unacceptable and yet ultimately meaningless. It’s the full-size version of having his stacked Kennedy Center board, of which he is the chairman, rename the institution after him. That was, I believe, Wednesday, though the days run together. Then there’s his new hall of presidents, a sick-burn tweet storm embedded on a wall of what remains of the White House. These all have the feeling of a man who is bored, tapped out, losing coherence and energy and who others are trying to keep distracted.
This case, which has been covered by my colleague Josh Kovensky, had the potential to provide a legal basis for the Trump White House to exercise considerable control — or at least pressure — over the judicial branch. There was never any indication that the White House had any hand in the case, but it didn’t seem like a stretch to assume it would have seized on a favorable ruling to assert more control over the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
It was always weird that a FOIA lawsuit was the vehicle for this effort. In that sense, McFadden’s ruling doesn’t tell us much about the larger constitutional interplay between the executive and judicial branches. He simply ruled that Congress had exempted itself and the courts from FOIA. The America First Legal Foundation argued that the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office weren’t part of the courts but part of the executive branch, and therefore not exempt from FOIA. McFadden ultimately ruled:
Because the Judicial Conference] and the Administrative Office indeed fall outside FOIA’s reach, the Court lacks subject matter jurisdiction over the records request. So it will grant the motion to dismiss.
When the lawsuit was originally filed earlier this year, it came at a time of unprecedented conflict between the Trump administration and the judiciary. For the first time, the White House had tried to communicate with judicial branch employees directly via mass email. The General Services Administration was unilaterally talking about closing federal buildings around the country that house federal courts and court services. Federal judges were even expressing concern that their security protection by U.S. marshals — an executive branch agency — might be revoked or made contingent.
For now, an obscure FOIA lawsuit won’t be a backdoor way for the Trump White House to bring some critical elements of the judicial branch under its control.
Wisconsin Judge Convicted of Interfering With ICE
Wisconsin state judge Hannah Dugan was convicted on one felony count and acquitted on one misdemeanor account for interfering with the ICE arrest of an undocumented immigrant in her courthouse. My sense is all three of these things are true:
The jury was careful and attentive and and took its job seriously.
There are good grounds for Dugan to appeal.
This case would never have been prosecuted under any other administration.
Always a Disproportionate Reaction
No doubt some of Trump’s appeal to some people is his willingness to act — to do something — even if it’s disproportionate, results in collective punishment, and is ultimately ineffective or even counterproductive.
On that note, last night the Trump administration immediately suspended the green card lottery system that allowed the Brown University/MIT shooter to enter the country during Trump I.
The Undocumented Underground
TPM’s Hunter Walker: How a ‘Habeas Machine’ Reunited One Family That Was Pulled Apart by ICE
Lawless U.S. Boat Strikes Have Killed 104 People
Another unlawful U.S. attack on two alleged drug-smuggling boats killed five people, brings the campaign’s known death toll to 104.
Meanwhile, CNN reports that the top lawyer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Chairman Gen. Dan Caine in November that military commanders should request to retire if they receive an unlawful order.
Saber-Rattling Watch
NYT: Trump Relies on Distortions to Support His Pressure Campaign on Venezuela
WSJ: Trump Ups Pressure on Venezuela but Repeatedly Shifts the Rationale
WaPo: Stephen Miller’s hard-line Mexico strategy morphed into deadly boat strikes
Colorado Senators Try to Save NCAR
Colorado’s two Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, are holding up the Senate appropriations package until Congress agrees to fully fund the National Center for Atmospheric Research and prevent its dismantling by the Trump administration. Miffed that Colorado officials rebuffed President Trump’s symbolic pardon of Tina Peters, the OMB announced it was breaking up the world-class research center in Boulder.
When the Chips Are Down, Attack Trans People
In a predictable pivot to a familiar page in their political playbook, Republicans are trying to distract from their bankrupt health care policies by attacking gender-affirming care for trans Americans.
Coast Guard Can’t Make Up Its Mind
In yet another in a series of flip-flops, the Coast Guard abruptly deleted language from its new workplace harassment policy that had downgraded swastikas and nooses from overt hate symbols to “potentially divisive,” the WaPo reports.
Good Read
The Guardian: Inside DoJ’s controversial prosecution of a Texas ‘antifa cell’ charged with terrorism
Hard Read
Rolling Stone: Melissa Hortman Died in a Shocking Act of Political Violence. This Is the Story of Her Life
The Corruption: Pardons Editions
WaPo: “At least 20 people who have received clemency from Trump so far this year — cutting their sentence short, restoring their civil rights after imprisonment or allowing them to avoid prison altogether — were also forgiven of financial penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars.”
‘Don’s Best Friend’
From a NYT deep-dive on Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein:
One woman, then a model and college student in her early 20s living in Manhattan, said she attended four parties at the mansion. She cannot recall the names of most of the men she met at the gatherings, not even those Mr. Epstein directed her to “take care of” at two of them. Recruited by Ms. Maxwell and then abused by Mr. Epstein, she buried her shame and kept their secrets for years. But Mr. Trump’s presence stood out, she told The Times. He was a household name, someone Mr. Epstein often bragged about to the women around him, yet also seemed to compete with.
A Personalist Regime
After allegedly muting one dissenting member on the call, the Trump-stacked board of directors of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to rename it the “Trump-Kennedy Center” — even though the original name was designated by Congress in its authorizing legislation.
Save the Date!
Before we get swept up into the heart of the holiday season, I wanted to flag for you that we’re holding the first-ever Morning Memo Live event on Jan. 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C.
I’ll be hosting a panel discussion on an issue that encompasses so much of what Morning Memo has been covering over the past couple of years: the politicization of the Justice Department.
Morning Memo readers know how many different Trump-era stories are connected to the abuse of DOJ and the FBI. It’s the most significant of the many Trump II transgressions because it enables and reinforces a myriad of other abuses of power.
I’ll be joined at the event by:
Stacey Young, a former 18-year DOJ veteran who is the founder and executive director of Justice Connection, a network of DOJ alumni providing support to current and recent DOJ employees;
Aaron Zelinsky, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, where he prosecuted Roger Stone, and who is now a partner at Zuckerman Spaeder in Baltimore; and
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare who covers rule of law issues and fields wacky Signal messages from Lindsey Halligan.
We’ll discuss as much as we can squeeze into one evening, including the weaponization of the Justice Department as both sword and shield; the campaign of retribution against prosecutors and investigators; and the obliteration of DOJ’s traditional independence from the White House. We’ll save time for your questions.
Tickets to the event are going on sale starting … now. We’re keeping it relatively small: only 100 tickets will be sold. We want it to be a relatively intimate event so that we can have a productive discussion.
I look forward to seeing you there.
She’s Still Got It at 84
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at Balls and Strikes.
When President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the national unemployment rate was at 4 percent overall, and at 5.3 percent for Black workers. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its November 2025 dataset, and although the total unemployment rate is at 4.6 percent, the Black unemployment rate has soared to 8.3 percent — the highest level since August 2021.
One contributing factor is Trump’s mass firings of federal employees. Black people disproportionately work in the public sector, representing nearly 19 percent of the federal workforce compared to 13 percent of the civilian workforce. And they have been disproportionately impacted by Trump’s purges: Analyses by ProPublica and The New York Times found that the administration conducted its steepest staff cuts at the agencies with the most nonwhite and women workers, like the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
But the federal layoffs offer only a partial explanation. What the data is beginning to reveal is the devastating cumulative effects of the Trump administration’s policies for workers of color.
In January, for instance, Trump revoked an executive order that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1965 which prohibited companies with government contracts from engaging in racial discrimination. Johnson’s order required contractors to “take affirmative action” to ensure that applicants are hired (and employees are treated) without regard to their race.
For decades, Johnson’s executive order helped increase the representation of people of color and white women. For example, a longitudinal study spanning from 1973 to 2003 found that the affirmative action initiatives increased Native American employment by nearly 4 percent. Another analysis of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data from 1978 to 2004 concluded that the share of Black workers at government contractors continued to increase even after a contract ended and the employer was no longer subject to the regulations.
Now, Trump is blocking that important vehicle for integrating the workplace, characterizing it as “illegal DEI,” referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Instead of requiring companies to take affirmative action, Trump is requiring companies to certify that they are not “promoting DEI.” The administration also did not define the term, effectively discouraging companies that want to keep their government contracts from engaging in any activity that could conceivably be characterized as DEI. For reference, to date, the things the administration has decried as DEI include the Calibri font and indoor plumbing in Black neighborhoods.
On top of trying to prevent people of color from entering the workforce, the administration is making it easier to kick them out. Since taking office, Trump has claimed to possess limitless power to fire executive branch officers for any reason, including reasons that violate federal antidiscrimination law. Earlier this month, former immigration judge Tania Nemer sued the Trump administration and alleged that Trump fired her because of her sex, national origin, and political affiliation. Before she filed a complaint in federal court, she filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, arguing that her termination violated the Civil Rights Act. But the DOJ dismissed her complaint, writing that as an “inferior officer” under the Constitution, Nemer’s removal was “beyond the purview” of federal equal employment opportunity laws.
“Article II of the Constitution allows the President and heads of departments exercising his power to remove inferior officers without cause, subject to only narrow exceptions that do not apply to your former position,” said the DOJ letter. “No statute provides otherwise, and even if it did, the statute would run afoul of Article II.” Quite literally, this amounts to a claim of constitutional power for the president to fire thousands of government workers who are designated as “inferior officers,” based on their sex, race, or on any number of other legally protected characteristics.
The Trump administration has had the opportunity to back away from this implication. Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Trump v. Slaughter, the case about Trump’s attempts to fire members of the Federal Trade Commission who enjoy statutory job protections. Justice Clarence Thomas directly asked Solicitor General D. John Sauer for an example of a permissible restriction on the president’s removal authority. Sauer provided none, because, he says, none exists. “We don’t believe there are permissible restrictions on principal officers of the United States who exercise the executive power,” said Sauer.
Now, the Trump administration is trying to dismantle legal structures that allow people of color to challenge discrimination in the workplace. Congress and the courts recognized decades ago that even policies which may appear neutral on their face can disproportionately harm people of color. Because of this, many antidiscrimination laws incorporate disparate impact liability, a legal framework that asks if a rule is disproportionately harming a group of people, and if so, if that rule is actually necessary. If it is not, courts can take action to stop it.
Yet last week, the Department of Justice announced that it would no longer enforce disparate impact liability under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating based on race. Specifically, the rule would mean that anyone who receives DOJ funding — chiefly, local law enforcement agencies — would be free to engage in conduct that disproportionately harms people of color without worrying about Title VI enforcement action. In a press release, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon criticized disparate impact liability for allowing challenges to “neutral policies” without “evidence of intentional discrimination.”
This is wrong. What Dhillon’s analysis ignores is that disparate impact liability is the framework that allows courts to find out if a policy is indeed neutral, or if it merely disguises intentional discrimination. By limiting liability only to cases where there is open evidence of intentional discrimination, millions of people of color who interact with recipients of federal funds — whether applying for jobs, going to work, or just going about their lives — will be cut off from recourse for anything but the most obvious and explicit discrimination.
The Trump administration’s policies work in tandem. It is harder for people of color to enter the workforce. It is harder for them to remain in the workforce. And if they are victimized by illegal discrimination, it is harder for them to do anything about it.
The Trump White House isn’t really doing much to disguise at least one of its motivations for moving to dismantle a critical scientific research center in Boulder: It wants to free Big Lie supporter Tina Peters from prison in Colorado.
Colorado officials have refused to play along with President Trump’s purported pardon of Peters for her state conviction for tampering with election machines. While a presidential pardon for state crimes isn’t a real thing, the White House wants you to know that Colorado is paying a price for that perceived defiance: “Maybe if Colorado had a governor who actually wanted to work with President Trump, his constituents would be better served,” a senior White House official told NOTUS.
If that doesn’t seem like a direct link to the Peters pardon, trust me. It’s the response the White House gave to multiple other outlets, including the NYT and WaPo, who linked Colorado’s rejection of the Peters pardon with the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
It doesn’t have to be either/or. OMB Director Russ Vought may simply have seized on the Peters pardon as something near and dear to Trump’s heart and used it to justify disruption and chaos that he wanted to sow anyway.
But the bottom line is here were are five years after the 2020 election subversion scheme and the drive to craft a revisionist history of that effort is jeopardizing an innocent bystander that provides critical research into atmospheric science.
All of this is prompting a truly desperate response from scientific circles:
WaPo: “The announcement drew outrage and concern from scientists and local lawmakers, who said it could imperil the country’s weather and climate forecasting, and appeared to take officials and employees by surprise.”
Meteorologist Matt Lanza: “I cannot begin to tell you what a bad, bad, bad decision this is. Objectively so. This will absolutely cripple and devastate weather research in the U.S.”
NYT: “The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming.”
The Destruction: CFPB Edition
A glimmer of good news as the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a panel decision by Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both Trump appointees, that cleared the way for the dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The full appeals court will now consider the appeal.
The Retribution: Letitia James Edition
Disqualified interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan has made another mess of things, according to a new report from Politico.
After a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, declined last week to re-indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on bogus mortgage fraud charges, the foreperson of the grand jury presented the no-true bill in open court. Apparently, Halligan and her team didn’t want the failure or the details of the failed indictment to become public, but the assistant U.S. attorney who signed the draft indictment wasn’t in court to stop it, according to an order issued in the case.
Prosecutors waited to the next day to ask a magistrate judge to seal the court records, including the draft indictment, but he denied their motion since the cat was already out of the bag.
This was the second time a grand jury has declined to re-indict James since the original indictment was dismissed because Halligan was not validly appointed U.S. attorney. In this go-around, prosecutors tacked on to the draft indictment a new third count of making a false statement. It apparently wasn’t enough to persuade the grand jury.
As to why the grand jury foreperson did what they did, the magistrate judge wrote: “the Court will not speculate why the grand jury disclosed the no bill in open court.”
The Retribution: Jack Smith Edition
I understand the journalistic imperative to report what former Special Counsel Jack Smith told House Republicans in closed-door testimony yesterday, but the only important context here is that Smith is being targeted for retribution by the President Trump — and his GOP allies on the Hill are carrying his water.
If you need additional evidence, here’s how the retribution machine works, in part: Ahead of Smith’s testimony, the Trump DOJ and FBI supplied Congress with selective internal communications showing that some FBI agents expressed concerns about the Mar-a-Lago search in the summer of 2022. Those concerns have already been reported long ago, but it didn’t stop a senior Trump DOJ official from publicly trumpeting the document dump as a “bombshell.”
For Your Radar …
Today is the deadline for federal law enforcement to ship their intelligence files on “Antifa” and “Antifa-related” activities to the FBI for review by Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the WaPo notes, as part of the Trump White House’s broad targeting of its political opposition.
Venezuela Watch
The U.S. conducted its 26th lawless boat strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, killing four people and bringing the total death total in the high seas campaign to at least 99.
The U.S. military was blindsided by President Trump’s announcement of a blockade of Venezuela, the NYT reports:
Mr. Trump’s announcement of a “blockade” caught senior officials at the Pentagon and at Southern Command in Florida by surprise. On Wednesday, they scrambled to figure out the U.S. military’s role in the action, U.S. officials said.
Punitive and Performative
The Trump administration is planning to dramatically ramp up efforts to strip naturalized Americans of their citizenship, according to internal guidance obtained by the NYT. The plan calls for a massive increase in the number of such cases each month, straining government capacity and heightening the risk of due process violations:
The guidance, issued on Tuesday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services field offices, asks that they “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalization cases per month” in the 2026 fiscal year. If the cases are successful, it would represent a massive escalation of denaturalization in the modern era, experts said. By comparison, between 2017 and this year to date, there had been just over 120 cases filed, according to the Justice Department.
It’s not at all clear that the plan is feasible, but that may not really be the point.
Mass Deportation Watch
A unanimous three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said President Trump can keep the National Guard deployed in the nation’s capital while an appeal of the case proceeds. The decision largely swung on D.C.’s status as a federal district, not a state. The panel called into question the deployment of out-of-state national guards to states without their consent, calling it “constitutionally troubling.”
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb of D.C. blocked a new Trump administration policy limiting members of Congress from visiting ICE detention facilities, ruling that existing statutes provided for the visits for oversight purposes.
Chris Geidner takes a look at the last 100 days of Kavanaugh stops.
The White Nationalist Presidency, Part I
Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D) and Jacky Rosen (D) put a hold on the nomination of Adm. Kevin Lunday to lead the Coast Guard over its new workplace harassment policy downgrading swastikas and nooses from hate symbols to merely “potentially divisive.”
The White Nationalist Presidency, Part II
Madiba K. Dennie: How the Trump Administration Is Quietly Resegregating the American Workforce
Dersh Can’t Stop Dershing
Alan Dershowitz hand-delivered to the president in the Oval Office this week a draft of his upcoming book “Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?” and told Trump the Constitution wasn’t clear on the issue, the WSJ reports.
I’ll give you a little anecdote: Stephen Miller was perhaps the most concerned about the portrait session. He asked me, “Should I smile or not smile?” and I said, “How would you want to be portrayed?” We agreed that we would do a bit of both. And then when we were finished, he comes up to me to shake my hand and say goodbye. And he says to me, “You know, you have a lot of power in the discretion you use to be kind to people.” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you do, too.”
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
The agents were on the hunt, but as they staked out the hallway in 26 Federal Plaza looking for immigrants to detain, they had other prey in mind.
“I’ve never had kangaroo. I want to try,” said Samantha Camlica, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who has developed a reputation for aggression among the regular observers who monitor the court.
The other four agents flanking the corridor with her on that morning late last month were wearing masks. Camlica, who has declined to comment for this series, was the only one in the group whose affiliation was clearly visible.
Amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, ICE officers have been assisted by personnel from a slew of other federal agencies as they round up undocumented migrants. In New York City, more than anywhere else in the country, those detentions have taken place in the halls of 26 Federal Plaza and other courthouses as immigrants show up for required check-ins and hearings.
Another one of the agents volunteered that they had been offered dog meat on a trip to Korea.
“The translator said ‘roof roof,’” the agent explained.
Camlica noted she doesn’t “get how people could be vegetarian or vegan.”
“I like meat too much,” she said.
While the masked agents are a constant, menacing presence for the immigrants in the halls, they are not always an active one. On some days, no one is taken. Others have long lulls filled with quiet or aimless conversation. Then, suddenly there will be an explosion of activity and shouting as someone is grabbed and dragged into a stairwell.
As they mused about eating meat, Camlica and the other agents were on the verge of one of these violent moments that would see a young Venezuelan man pulled away from his parents. It would also activate a partnership between activists and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who have developed a method for quickly responding and trying to secure the release of immigrants who are taken.
